A Thousand Years
by TheNobleLark
Summary: As an AU for Season 4, this is a world in which the Doctor!Donna travels with her human companion, John Smith. Inspired by the wonderful lazoey on Tumblr, I wanted to just group this story together properly. This is totally a Ten/Donna pairing story, so if you don't like it, you really don't have go to the trouble of telling me.
1. The Runaway Groom

"What?"

The Doctor looks with alarm at the man who has appeared in her TARDIS. One minute she's fiddling with the controls and the next there's a-a…a human in a tuxedo there! "Who are you?"

"What?" the groom in white repeats.

"What the hell are you doing here?" The Doctor rushes from around the console to snap at him. Her hands are in her pockets but they're just itching for the Sonic.

"What?" the man repeats yet again. Articulate bloke, he is.

"How the hell did you get here?!" The Doctor gives up on speech with the human male. "This is impossible—you're impossible! You're a human; humans can't just pop in! No one can just pop in! What are you? Rift in space; time anomaly?"

"Could you just tell me where I am, please?!" The human man rips at his hair, pulling it at the tips. "Nerys is gonna kill me!"

"Who's Nerys?" The Doctor asks with disdain clear in her voice. "What kind of a name is that?"

"My fiance's name—so where am I?" this groom can switch vocal gears incredibly fast.

"The TARDIS," the Doctor braces herself for the questions coming.

"The what?"

'_There it is,_' she thinks to herself and repeats: "the TARDIS."

"The what?!"

"You're in the TARDIS, and I'm not repeatin' myself again!"

"Fine; I'll find out for myself!"

"Don't!" before the Doctor can finish warning him the groom is on the ramp. He whips the doors open but thank Rassilon he has the sound of mind to hang onto the doorway. He gawps openly and the Doctor can only roll her eyes before sauntering over smugly. Again, her hands find her pockets. "You're in space - outer space - and in my ship, the TARDIS."

The groom breathes heavily for several seconds. "How am I breathing?"

"TARDIS," supplies the woman to his left in a casual manner, "protecting us."

"And you are," he prompts.

"I'm the Doctor."

"John," says the groom. He moves away from the doors and she - just the Doctor? - closes them. "Why do you say human like it's an exterior factor? Is it?—for you?"

"Yeah," the Doctor nods. She can see the word 'alien' dancing on the tip of his tongue, but to his credit, he shows remarkable restraint in the matter. "You can call me an alien, just this once, if you have to."

John seems to be ignoring, she decides, as he gazes around him. This must seem so different for him, in his blindingly bleached tuxedo. He looks like he's supposed to be a chauffeur for Beverly Hills adolescents. That humorous thought fades as John sees Lee's blazer hanging over the railing. "Was this another human's before?"

The Doctor swallows with painful difficulty.

_Lee stood on a transport in The Library, an actual planet of a library. He stood facing his Doctor, the most astounding (Time) Lady he had ever known. This woman took him from a life of incomplete memories and experience. "D-D-Doctor, y-you c-can't l-leave me." _

_The Doctor wished she could cry. Instead she kept her fingers busy on the controls, knowing this would be the last time she might ever see her dearest stutterer. After meeting such a cure to her cold wrath - and a human one at that - she took him to see the stars. She took him around the world only to lead them to the Library. It was her own fault, she had thought, when Lee was integrated with the coding of the CAL interface. He would never survive outside of The Library again. _

_"D-Doctor!" Lee persisted, refusing to give up. He knew her well enough to know that she would try to shut her hearts off. For all she boasted about her Time Lady superiority she was awfully human inside, and guilt was a very human burden. "I-I-I lo-l-love y-y-"_

_"It's okay, Lee," the Doctor tried to force a smile. Of course she knew. This wonderfully human man had taken both of her hearts in each hand and kept them like treasures. And now that they were healed enough to be given over willfully she was losing him. Tears were clouding her vision but never fell. She was in so much pain she wasn't sure if she would even be aware if they did. "I-I…I know, and… "_

_Lee panicked when light filled his vision. He wasn't done. There was so much more he wanted to say. He wanted to declare his love with this amazing woman everyday for the rest of his life. "D-D-Do-"_

_The Doctor screwed her eyes shut so tightly it burned. She couldn't watch as Lee faded from sight like a dissolving memory. When she dared to open her eyes again he was gone, forever a string of data in the largest mainframe ever created. This way at least she could give him what he deserved: a normal life, with a family; a woman who could give him a family. Maybe he would even conquer his stutter with all of eternity to spend in that hard-drive. _

"He's not human," the Doctor wishes it were sharper, but it's barely a whisper. She takes the jacket from John and lets the ol' girl take it to his old room for her. Under her breath she sighs, "not anymore."

"Doctor," John starts, but wonders how he's supposed to comfort a woman who's not human, barely approachable, and probably not interested in his comfort.

"Where to?" she asks instead.

"I'm sorry," John furrows his brows in confusion.

"Anything you might be running late for, Sunshine?" the Doctor quirks a fine, ginger brow at the man. "Or do you just walk about in prom apparel for the fun of it?"

"Oh," John looks at his own body as if it were covered in paint. Then, with a start, he realizes to what she's referring. "Oh, yes—yes, I do: St. Mary's, Hayden Road, Chiswick…London…England…Earth!"

"I do," the Doctor rolls her eyes, "what a cliche."

—

"Here!" John declares, practically running out of the TARDIS, only to find that they're on a rooftop. "We…are?"

"Hm, that's odd," the Doctor declares. "She's having some troubles. What's wrong, girl?"

Although all John hears is whirring noises he notices the blue paneling of the weird little box. It looks like an old style police box, from about the 60's. As he peers all around it he looks back inside, where the Doctor croons to the bleeping walls, he notices: "it's bigger on the inside."

"Yup," the box's pilot answers plainly. Her hands are still on the walls, asking what's wrong. "Poor sweetheart, it's like you've swallowed something… "

John turns to ask what the TARDIS has swallowed (moreover to ask how a box swallows anything) when the Doctor is up in his face. She holds what looks like a cross between a pen and a lipstick, that glows blue at the top. "What is it?—what's wrong?"

"You aren't a time anomaly in such a strict sense, but you are anomalous. In fact, you have distinct patterns around your signature that suggest that you're a temporal stitch out of sync with your proper timelines." Although she only looks up a second, she can see John is pulling at some of her words. "Time is different around you and I don't know why yet."

"May I sit?" John begins sitting nonetheless, although the Doctor does follow the movement, still bleeping him.

"Your fiance's gonna kill you for sitting in a white tux," she comments.

"Fiance…Nerys!" he yelps. Still, as his hands pull at his hair and cover his mouth he doesn't exactly leap up into action. "Never mind Nerys, my Mum is gonna kill me."

"If you don't mind me asking," the Doctor begins, still Sonic-ing away. "You don't seem in that big a hurry to get married, so why are you?"

John stretches his legs out a bit. He wishes he were wearing his trainers. Then at least he wouldn't have these damned things pinching his toes. As he leans back on his hands, he doesn't hesitate to delve into the story. "She begged me. Not Nerys, that is, my Mum. She kept telling me to ask Nerys after we started dating. She tells me I'm not exactly one of a kind, so I might as well find someone who's willing to settle for me and grab her while I can."

"Sounds like a sweetheart," the Doctor scoffs. "How long have you and this Nerys been seeing each other?"

"Six months, I think?" John asks more than answers. "I'm a temp where she works and she brought me coffee, flirted, you know, the works. She asked me out and I figured I might as well, and now…here I am."

"Not getting married," the Doctor quips. She sees the sadness in John, though. Even if he isn't that fond of this Nerys, he doesn't deserve any kind of misery over it. Maybe he really is a normal bloke who just wants to be married. The Doctor feels cold bitterness fill her again; she would like to be married as well but time is a cruel mistress, especially to her own kind it seems. "Well, John, there doesn't appear to by any special reason at all for you showing up in the TARDIS."

"Brilliant," he offers in a downhearted, sarcastic manner.

"Where do you work?"

"HC Clements; it does security and keys and the like, but I just work files and stuff. Nerys is Human Resources, so you could ask her," John stands and dusts his butt off a bit. "Time to face the slaughter."

The Doctor stands after him, a brow still cocked in amusement. "Won't be so bad, although you might want to come up with a reason as to why you're showing up with another woman other than 'I beamed into her spaceship for a quick freshening up'."

"Yeah—"

The Doctor sucks in a breath as the same glowing light that brought John to the TARDIS earlier appears again. He has a second to look confused before he's gone in a blink. She pulls out the Sonic and gets a lock; "come on, darlin', Earthboy's on the move."

—

John finds himself not far from where he needs to be married. He is actually witnessing another wedding happen this very second. It's a dark skinned man he can see, and a woman with her hair pulled back, though the vibrant red is still easily visible. She is laughing and cheering, apparently very happy to married. Must be nice, John thinks.

Something's not right, and he blinks again.

When he opens his eyes he's at least a little closer to where he needs to be. He wishes he knew why he keeps phasing in and out of reality, as it seems to be. It never started until today, he notes as he walks in no big rush. Nothing exciting ever happens, he groans. He can already hear Nerys's shrill barks at him, and his Mum biting his ear off about how he's one of one million. Even his name is overly ordinary: John Smith.

What a cliche; that's what the Doctor said. Now, the Doctor: that's an interesting woman. She might be called a spacewoman, John supposes but that's pulling at hairs. Still, she is brilliant. Her flaming hair is most enviable, John finds, having always wanted to be a ginger himself. Her eyes are also striking. They're blue, but he remembers seeing a little golden-amber halo around the pupils, that might have even glowed by themselves if he was imagining things correctly.

John hops up the steps just to find everything looking abandoned. He checks his watch and knows why: he has missed his own , at least he got to be on a spaceship, since today is the day he will be murdered. First Nerys will kill him, then his mother will be next. At least his grandfather will understand, even if he does have Spanish flu at the moment. Poor Gramps, although he didn't like the girl or the wedding from the beginning.

"On the trail we blaze, John Elton?"

John turns to see the Doctor walking as calm as ever up behind him. Her hands are still in her pockets in that jacket of hers. '_Isn't she hot in that_' he thinks (and immediately tries to backpedal over). "It's Smith, actually."

"I was making a joke," she clarifies with little laughing at his expense. The man is already walking to his own wedding reception, late, in full dress, there's no need to be cruel. Her left hand fidgets within the pocket. "Anyway, take this."

"Wha—seriously?" John asks in dismay as the Doctor slips a gold ring onto his finger. "Isn't that kind of a slap in the face for everybody?"

"If they moved onto the reception without you with as little thought as I believe, seeing the lack of police, I'd say they won't notice." The Doctor says coolly. Okay, that might have been a little cruel. "Plus, it's a biodampener; consider it an alien medical bracelet. I don't know why time is pulling at the seams around you but until I can, you might as well keep your genetic signature under wraps. Plus, I don't have temporal spanners on me."

"Okay," John glances at the ring curiously. "With this ring I am biodamped."

"'Till death do we part," the Doctor offers with equal sass.

"Here we go," John walks up the stairs to the reception hall. He feels the Doctor still following and feels comforted by at least the moral support. As he opens the door he finds the party in full swing. Nerys is there with three guys hanging off her actual wedding veil. Everyone else is having a grand time until they see him. "You had the reception without me?"

"John, what happened to you?" Nerys asks, without worry.

"You had the reception," John repeats, finally letting some anger leak through. He can't play the nice boy forever, as he clenches his fists and growls through his teeth, "without me?!"

"Hello, there; I'm the Doctor," she declares as she runs up behind him, careful not to stand too close. "I just met John today; told me to come."

"They had the reception without me," John gestures blatantly.

"Rude," the Doctor concurs without shame, while offering him a smile that is consoling and a little jovial.

"It was all paid for, what were we supposed to do?"

"Thank you, Cliff," John glares at an exceedingly ordinary seeming bloke.  
"What the hell were we supposed to do?!" an older woman comes storming over. Her hands are flying and her mouth is spouting a million words a minute, most being quite profane. "Where the hell have you been?!"

The Doctor notes that the fast talking woman must be the mother of the equally rapid-tongued John. She's as ghastly as the Doctor imagined her being. Poor John, being bombarded like this. He's gawping again, because, really, what is he supposed to answer. So, the Doctor takes action, bursting into crocodile tears. Everyone freezes and looks at her. "John was so kind to save me from these thugs earlier! They were just ghastly but this wonderful, brave man saved me! He's just brilliant!"

To John's shock the room applauds as the Doctor declares him her hero, lightly touching his arm. She then turns to Nerys and his mother, telling them about how brave he was. As Sylvia quickly takes credit for her son's valiance he catches the Doctor in the corner of his eye, winking at him through her little show. Oh, what a minx, he grumbles in his mind, though he is glad for her quick distracting method.

Soon the party is up and running again and everything seems fine. He is strong armed into several dances with Nerys, most of which are too vulgar for his tastes, but he just makes a fool of himself anyway. Nerys always complained he was too lanky to dance well. At least everyone seems to be having a good time.

The Doctor is leaned against the bar, partaking in some gold old fashioned earthen alcohol. A spacegirl's gotta have her vices, right?—and this is a party. While John was gone she took the time to look up HC Clements; their sole proprietor is Torchwood. She looks around the room and sees a couple dancing comfortably, gazing at each other with besotted eyes. She wants to find it nauseating but she supposes it's actually rather sweet. It doesn't help the painful memory of when she and Lee danced together for the first time. No; she has kept the memories and the bitterness at bay, and she will continue. Besides, as she watches John make some vaguely chicken-like movements, she feels something akin to healing fondness.

A breeze catches the hair on the back of the Doctor's neck. Even under her thick mane of hair they stand straight. She knows that feeling anywhere: temporal wave. She launches herself from the bar, "John!"

Nerys isn't too pleased with how the redhead inserts herself between her and John but doesn't get a chance to complain. John just turns to the woman in earnest intrigue. "Doctor, what is it? Doesn't the biodampener work?"

"Where did you get that ring?" Nerys asks as soon as John has pointed out the gold ring on his ring finger.

"Do y'self a favor, find a new attitude to go with your borrowed time and your old face," the Doctor snips at the bride quite easily.

"What about my something blue?" is all the blond asks in return.

"How about I strangle you, then you'll have the whole set," the Doctor smiles and glares at the woman. Thankfully the blond goes off with a snarl to lick her wounds. "John, a biodampener won't protect against a temporal wave."

"Why is there a temporal wave in the first place?" asks John.

"Someone somewhere is tearing at time and space, and it's reacting to something anomalous going on here." As soon as she has said it it's like a sonic wave hits the reception. Things are knocked over and the electronics all but explode. Many fall to the ground unconscious, others vomit.

"Oh, my God, what's happened to them?" John asks as he and the Doctor both go about helping people. Nerys is looking between the two of them but he snaps at her. "Don't just stand there, help!"

"You guys all right?" the Doctor asks the kids. It breaks her hearts to see them so distraught. They're all in tears, complaining about their tummies and looking horribly feverish.

"You're a doctor, help them!" John urges her.

"I'm not that kind of doctor," she tells him just for the sake of it, but still pulls out her handy-dandy stethoscope. She checks each other kids and moves away when their parents find their feet again.

"Doctor, what was that?" John asks gravely.

"It was a wave in the timeline, like a tidal wave hitting a peninsula beach. Temporal anomalies create ripples in time and dimensions, and sometimes those ripples overlap and create waves of disturbances in time and space. If the events are close enough to each other dimensionally, the wave will be like this. Everyone's a little motion sick but they'll be fine."

"Is it my fault?"

"No, but you do have to come with me," the Doctor grabs his hand and leads him away.

"John, wait; who is that woman?!" Sylvia shouts after her son, who only looks over his shoulder before letting the strange ginger take him away.

—

"So, the best way I can explain is," the Doctor picks up an HC Clements mug, "this is the TARDIS. She's a time machine, she picks up on anomalies: temporal, dimensional, physical, you name it. So, she picks up on your signal." She then picks up a pencil. "You are an anomaly yourself, like a little raft between to oceans. Then, if there are waves on either side of you, where are you gonna end up?"

John watches her pop the pencil into the mug with satisfaction while he is still confused. "I'm a pencil inside a mug?"

"Yup, 4B, John Smith," she nods at him. "You are anomalous, and that led you to me. It's because of another anomaly going on here that you got literally phased into my TARDIS."

"So, that's what we're here to look into?"

"Yep," the Doctor rolls her glossed lips to pop the 'p' sound happily. "I looked up HC Clements, and this brilliant little company is linked to Torchwood."

"What's Torchwood?" John asks as he gets into the lift with the Doctor without hesitation. He figures he has no reason not to stick with the woman who has only been helpful.

"Long story, but Torchwood handles events of the supernatural variety, including aliens, time travel, dimension ripping, the like." The Doctor Sonics the the button they need.

"So, like an entire agency of you?" John smirks a little bit.

"Oi," she chides him but also with a smile on her face.

"So, I'm anomalous, and because of other anomalies I found the TARDIS. And, if HC Clements is connected to this kind of thing, and behind something shifty going on in this building, I might be like…a plot device or something."

"An anomaly can stay stable even through time waves, like you saw earlier. You could literally used as an expeditionary," the Doctor slows her walking. "Isn't that right, _Nerys_?"

"Oh, look at the clever little ginger doctor," the blond in question steps out. "Figured us all out. How did you know it was me?"

"I could smell your perfume as soon as I stepped off the lift," the Doctor snarks at the woman.

"Nerys?" John squints as if he can't believe his eyes. "You're in on this sci-fi jiggery?"

"My guess is Nerys kept close to you to avoid time wave whiplash while she was working down here." The Doctor spares John a small pat on the arm before turning back to his traitorous fiance. "That hole you've drilled; what's it for?"

"Can't tell you that, gingersnap," Nerys all but spits.

"Nerys, why are you doing this?" John continues to plead.

"Oh, come on, John, why do I do anything? I'm promised more money than you'll make in your lifetime just for bringing you in. Little John Smith, a cookie cutter of a person if ever there was one. I can't believe how easy it was to reel you in like this! Did you even have a clue?"

"I know you would never have the brains to be behind this whole thing so I want to talk to your boss. You know, the one breathing heavily over in the dark corner there." The Doctor cuts off Nerys's rant.

"Oh, the Doctor come at last," a raspy female voice cackles. A red, alien spider creeps out into the open, all crab pincers and thorax.

"What is that?!" John nearly wretches at the sight of it.

"Racnoss," the Doctor supplies as shortly as possible. '_Impossible; the Racnoss have been gone since the dark ages, so what is she? She could be the empress, if there were to be any survivor. So, what does she want, then?_'

"I am going to be your ruler, anomalous human," she/that/it/thing hisses at John.

"And there we have it, trying to use you for your temporal stability," the Doctor pulls out the Sonic. "Don't believe them, John, you're more than just a spoon for digging."

"If I go will you leave the Earth in peace?" John asks while also moving in front of the Doctor. He's a toothpick of a man but he is a man, and won't let this _thing_ have her.

"No, John, it's okay, I'm not going anywhere without you." The Doctor can't help but think it's sweet of John to be concerned with protecting her, the naive earthboy. "Especially…now!"

John feels what he recognizes as his kind of spidey-sense. Is another wave coming? No, he blinks and then he and the Doctor are on the Tardis again. He looks around and seeks the Doctor's eyes. "So…Nerys was behind all this. She was using me to block anomaly waves for her spider queen? I guess that's why they call it head of human resources."

The Doctor looks up to where John looks horribly forlorn. His freckly face is ashen. He kicks some dust on the TARDIS floor with his shoe. "I guess it was crazy of me to think that a girl like Nerys would like me."

"Don't say that, John," the Doctor says softly. Her normally booming voice is velvety and gentle now. "You're brilliant; one in a million."

"I feel more like one of one million," John sighs.

"Don't be like that," the Doctor chides him again. She goes over to him, gently taking his hand in hers. "I want you to see something no human has ever seen before—in fact, I've never been here either."

"Where is here?" John asks, though it's pointless. The Doctor opens the doors and he sees the cosmos. The colors are tumultuous, like a glittery sea. "When is here?"

"John Smith, welcome to the creation of the Earth."

John is absolutely in awe. He has never seen anything this beautiful. He has his books and documentaries but he has never seen any of it in person. This is the most brilliant thing he has ever seen. He imagines it is the most amazing thing he will ever see in his lifetime.

The Doctor goes between looking at John and looking out the doors. She is marveling at this. It is a wonder how all the rocks just floating around will gravitate to form Earth. And from Earth, these magnificent humans will make all they are from nothing. Amazing humans like John Smith, she thinks. As she looks over at him, smiling at his wonder, she remembers: this is why I'm so fond of humans. They never cease to be amazed at the universe, no matter how much they themselves amaze her.

"So, what do the Racnoss want down that hole?" John asks quietly.

"We're going to find out," the Doctor and John continue to watch as rocks clump together. Finally, a defined point floats by and she gasps. "The Racnoss' ship became the center of the Earth. They were hiding from war and became the center of the human planet."

"Then why me?" John wonders aloud.

"You are just the anomaly they need. They're resurrecting a ship that runs on energy that hasn't been used since the dark ages, in hopes of rewriting the fall of their empire. They'd need someone as anomalous as you just to survive the time waves." After the Doctor has explained it the TARDIS shakes under their feet. "Dammit—they're pulling us back."

The shaking stops and John steadies himself. "Are we back in HC Clements?"

"Yes, but don't you worry about it," the Doctor puts her Sonic back in her pocket. "Listen, John, I'm going to stop them. I promise I will stop them, but you have to stay safe."

"What are you planning to do?"

"What _are_ you planning to do, physician? My children will be resurrected and our planet can be reborn!" The Empress hisses out, all of her eyes turning every which way. "What planet will you have when this is done?!"

"Oh, the Earth isn't my planet, but that doesn't mean you can have it. No, my planet is gone, although the name carries: Gallifrey." The Doctor stands resolute, facing the Racnoss Empress. "You know of me, and you know of Gallifreyans from the Time War. Listen to me and surrender. I will find a planet for you and your children but you will surrender the Earth. Do you accept?"

"I will have to decline, Doctor of Gallifrey!" the Empress hisses.

"Then what happens is your doing!" the Doctor roars like thunder. She Sonics above her and several of the circular hatches open up, gushing water. "This facility is under the Thames; you and your children are going to drown, Empress of the Racnoss!"

"My children!" the she-beast screams in dismay as her drill hole fills with water. She turns to the Doctor. "Your children did perish! Spare mine! Spare my children!"

The Doctor remains stoic, although the memory burns in her. The fire starts at the roots of her hair and seems to scald her right through her brain into her hearts.

"Doctor!" John shouts over the flow of water. He doesn't know what's happening, but he knows that this Doctor is not like the Doctor he has come to know. This Doctor stands with an inexpressive face, and it scares him. "You can stop now!"

The Doctor feels herself being physically pulled back into the present. She looks towards John and starts moving before she knows. The poor man is soaked to the bone, not that she isn't. She takes his hand and rushes him out, sparing a look towards the Racnoss. Part of her wants to be ashamed of what she has done. She wishes she were more appalled of her genocide, but sometimes it's a kingdom for a country, or a palace for a planet. This hasn't been the first time she has had to commit genocide and she fears it won't be the last. This is the burden of the last Time Lord: the Destroyer of Worlds.

"What about Nerys?" John shouts as they make their way up the ladder.

"Converted to Huon energy for the Empress," the Doctor shouts back at him. "They were going to kill her eventually—they always were."

John follows the Doctor out of the hatch and sits next to her. He breathes in the air, just breathing for the sake of it. "There is a big problem."

"What's that?" the Doctor asks distractedly, again fishing for the Sonic.

"We've drained the Thames," John chuckles. The Doctor finally looks at him. She looks so tired, he finds, and so sad. Her eyes seem so dark, like a person who has had a vivid nightmare. Then she laughs, and he laughs with her. "Could I just go home, now?"

"Come on, Earthboy," she holds out her hand. The two wobble a little, and the Doctor lets John hold her by the waist as she Sonics towards the sky. As that familiar whirring comes she finds her home sweet home. "To Chiswick, John Smith?"

"To Chiswick," he nods. He's just as tired as she looks, he guesses. They're both quiet, but he doesn't know what exactly they would say even if they weren't. What is there to say? The mechanical sound comes again and John looks up. "Here already?"

"She makes good time," the Doctor chuckles a little at her own joke, patting the TARDIS fondly. It hums at her, as if offering a pity laugh. The Doctor follows John to the door and feels her hearts starting to ache again. Not another goodbye, she curses. She doesn't think she's ready to let go of John Smith. "Here we are, then."

"Thank you," John smiles genuinely at her.

"I'm sorry about your wedding," the Doctor offers a bit lamely. When John only shrugs she shakes her head at herself. "What will you do?"

"Lost my fiance, lost my job, and a lot of my sanity in the same day, so," John scoffs. Then he looks intensely at the Doctor. Her bangs are curling slightly from the dampness. "What will you do?"

"Oh, the usual, probably, travelling the universe. I'll see some things, try to meet some people." The Doctor looks at John's gentle smile, more pulled to the left but quirked higher on the right. He has dimples, she notices, and very brown eyes. "You could come with me."

"What?" John asks the overly familiar question.

"Come with me."


	2. Partners in Crime

**"Come with me." **

One minute you're inviting a new companion along, the next: you've blinked and he's gone. You're both gone. You're both pulled through a crack in time and space. Through the rift of dimensionality and now they've been separated. This is getting increasingly puzzling.

'_God save us if we ever meet a weeping angel,_' the Doctor thinks to herself. As a Time Lord, she has felt only a couple minutes amiss. What has it been for John? Why has the rift in time pulled them into and through, instead of like before? "Now, where in the world is John Smith?"

Although there's no answer, the auburn haired woman starts back to the TARDIS. In all honesty, she really does hope John intended to say yes. A short time with him and he seemed fully prepared to shoulder the burden of her company. He was brilliant, truly, and if she's _too_ honest with herself he might do her some good.

"Adipose?" the Doctor scrunches her pretty face into a befuddled expression before entering. She kicks the door shut behind her. "Adipose Industries; what would John be doing there?"

_Time has bent around you; what has happened to the human?_

"I don't know how his reality has been altered because of this," the Doctor answers her sentient, blue friend.

_You had better find him, dearest. I did not stuff myself on anomalous temporal energy just so you could lose him!_

"Oi, watch the attitude, sweetheart!" The Doctor rolls her eyes at her time machine. She hopes it hasn't been too hard on John. Oh, no—what if he didn't even survive the changes? No, the Sonic found his signature stable, so there's that at least. But what happened?

The TARDIS wavers into view in an alley, behind a boldly blue car. The Doctor, wearing a corporate kind of outfit, pops her head out, making sure no one is moseying about. Once she's sure she continues out and onward. She does appreciate having the opportunity to wear heels, even if they can be impractical in her particular field of work.

It doesn't take long to find Adipose Industries, an imposing building of glass windows. The Doctor spies a paper, marking a date a good year after she met John. It makes a kind of aching appear in her chest. Although she didn't actually experience a year's separation, she certainly knows what it's like to have time play a trick on you. Time in The Library will mess with anyone's sense of reality. She also hopes John doesn't think she has up and abandoned him.

—

"John Smith, health and safety," he mutters a bit crossly. A whole bloody year he has spent going from job to job. Well, technically a year has passed, even though he remembers being with the Doctor like it was minutes ago. Was it minutes or months ago? He can't remember. Either way, he wishes he was with her, instead of here, toying with this…?

"It's made of eighteen karat gold, and it's yours for free." The woman is on the phone with a client but she talks towards John. He, for all intents and purposes, is well distracted by the funny little capsule of gold. "No, sorry, we don't give out pens."

"I'll just need to keep this for testing," John sighs and takes off. He's supposed to take a client list and check on the newest registrants. There's no use, though. He doesn't intend to keep the job, anyway. He strolls out of the complex with his hands in his pockets.

In a midst the feeling of little and too much time passing, John finds himself greatly discontented. Sometimes he's glad it doesn't feel like a whole year has passed. Other times he wishes he didn't feel so disconnected with his own present. Most of all he misses the Doctor, but can never tell if it's missing her after a year of not seeing her, or after being ripped apart within seconds. Sometimes John thinks that he misses his entire world when he blinks his eyes.

"What time's this then?"

'_There it is_,' John thinks to himself. "What am I?—a flippin' kid?"

"I might think so with the way you behave, mister," Sylvia snaps at her son. "Work day's not over so you better have a good excuse for bein' here!"

John lets Sylvia grind at him all she likes. She covers all the bases, too. There's the matter of his strange episodes, how he zones out, how he can't hold a job, or a girl. Most of all, Sylvia complains about how he intends to wait for a woman of great mystery. He has told her nothing of the Doctor, only that he will not go anywhere until he has found her.

All these matters are covered in the time it takes him to switch coats and get a thermos of tea.

"Where's Granddad?" it's a tired, sad little question.

Always up the hill indeed. It's a wonder the man missed his only grandson's wedding from Spanish flu. Still, if it makes an old man happy (and away from Sylvia) John can only encourage the habit.

"Permission to come aboard, sir?" he greets his Gramps with a salute.

"Permission granted, me boy!" Wilf chuckles. "She gave you what for I imagine."

"Yeah, the usual," John sits himself down. It's just becoming dusk now; not dark enough for stars. "What are you doin' out here in the light? Surely you can't see anything."

"Venus," answers Wilf. He holds a finger up to where one bright celestial body shines. "The only planet in our solar system named after a woman."

John bounces his eyebrows and a smile comes to his face before he can figure why. "Good for her."

"Thinkin' about your doctor again, eh? Isn't there a legal issue in you fancyin' her like that?" asks Wilf. He delights in watching his grandson get increasingly flustered. "She must be really good at what she does."

"She is, and she's not my doctor, not that kind of doctor, and…" John throws his hands up. Although, it's not in real frustration—if anyone has understood him it's Wilfred. "I'm still waiting to see her."

"Why can't you just go and find her, John?"

"I've tried!" he crows. He has indeed tried. Somehow, in all the time that has/hasn't passed, he has tried to find the Doctor. You would think someone would notice a beautiful, flame haired woman running around in a long, brown leather coat wherever disaster is. Nope, not one paper, or internet article, or Facebook account noted a woman anywhere near the Thames when it drained. John remembers it, though. He remembers very well being there with the Doctor. "She's…nowhere."

Wilfred looks on his grandson. The boy has gone through his whole life able to be defined by one word: fine. John Smith, the average lad, with average ambitions and an average demeanor. He never wanted to be an adventurer or a spaceman or a detective. John never asked to find special things, he just wanted to find something that made _him _special. Looking at the smile he smiles now, thinking of the Doctor, maybe she is just that.

"I'll wait, though," John mumbles, now a bit sheepish about it. He wiggles his toes in his trainers, wrist clasped in hand. "Even if I have to wait a hundred—no, a thousand years, I'll wait for her."

"Then you wait." Wilf's voice becomes suddenly soft, after all his guffawing, and it grabs John's attention like he needs. "If you're this determined to wait for a woman then you wait on, Lad. You just wait, and you'll find her, I know it."

John considers his Granddad's words very carefully. This man survived a great war, seeing things no man should have to see. Even yet this man returned with unstained hands. And what did that man with untainted hands do?—he waited. After meeting John's Nan all of once, Wilf waited for years to meet her again. Wilfred Mott waited for one woman. Wilf waited for years to hold the hand of his true love and save him from his own life. Wilf knows a thing or two about waiting. "Thanks, Gramps; I think I will, yeah."

"Well," the old man clears his throat, "that doesn't mean you should do so sitting down on some dusty old hill with your gramps. You want to wait for a woman you might as well be in motion. Go and find something to do with yourself. If you have to wait to find her, it's still waitin'."

Trust the wisdom of your barmy old elders, John snickers. "All right, Gramps, I'm off."

"Where to?" Wilfred asks as John gathers himself off the ground.

"A roof."

—

The Doctor makes her way into the building easy enough. If you want to pass unquestioned just make it look like you know what you're doing! '_That should be my personal motto,_' she snarks at herself in her mind. The men who do glance at her she doesn't look in the eyes. All she does is flash the psychic paper - Jane Smith: Health and Safety - and continue.

Adipose's promise is plastered all around as saying "the fat just walks away". That's a creepy slogan, and there's something that doesn't sit right. That a human made up the word Adipose is unlikely, and given the saying it's more likely that there's something alien involved. The Doctor has never befriended an Adiposian, but she has met one or two.

Finally, there is a hallway that seems important enough to be red carpeted. The Doctor comes up to it, placing her hands on the porthole rim before looking, like the good ol' days of spying. The corporate head is lecturing a woman. The poor girl is all tied up. A glance around the room reveals the armed guards at her sides.

"Doctor?" the question is mouthed.

John stares blatantly in shock. His hands grip the railing of the window washer's carrier but his eyes are opposite him. He sees, through his window and then another, the Doctor. She looks the same, if more enthused than the last time he saw her. She's wearing a black blazer that cinches at her tiny waist nicely, leaving splotches of red blouse peeking across her cleavage and over her hourglass hips.

"Oh…my…GOD… "

The Doctor grins widely and mouths: "This. Is. BRILLIANT!"

"What the hell are you doing here?" John mouths in return, though he really should be questioning why he can understand her mouth movements. The Doctor seems very good at miming.

Looking…for you.

Me?

Sonic…time…thingy…read…in a paper…broke in here…crept along…them…talking…boop!…found…YOU! Th—

"Are we interrupting you?" the blond woman - Foster - drawls.

John and the Doctor meet eyes before concurring: "Run!"

The Doctor Sonics the window locked and then the handle of her own door. Before she takes off she slips her heels off, figuring they're only going to be the death of her from here on in. Still she doesn't hesitate to charge up the stairs. She can't believe it! She found John! In fact she has really found him as she, heading up, meets him, heading down. Her arms are immediately around him, which he receives in good humor.

John lets his arms go around the Doctor easily, still a bit stunned. "Oh my God, it—you—you've changed."

"How?" the Doctor asks as they pull apart.

"We—you're," John scratches at the back of his neck, "your clothes!"

"Yes, I do change clothes, now come on!" The Doctor takes John's hand in hers and starts back up the stairs again.

"I can't believe this!" John chatters, more animated than he has been in…well, since he was last with her. "I couldn't believe it when I got a job here! I mean, it's nice, it's in the city, it's away from home, that's for certain. Then, I decide to look up the place on Google Maps and this very building is the roof where the TARDIS landed us a year ago!"

The Doctor stops suddenly. She's a step or two ahead of him but holds his hand firmly. Her face is serious, "it really has been a year, then."

John stops too, now. He has to think about how he's going to answer that. He should say that it has been a year. Hasn't it? That's kind of debatable. "Sometimes I think it's a year. Sometimes I only know to tell myself it's been a year because I remember you like it was yesterday—minutes ago, even."

"Oh, John," the Doctor softens. Her grip on his hand turns from holding-you-to-keep-you-up to holding-you-because-we-both-need-it. The hand moves from his palm/wrist to take his fingers gingerly. "I know what it's like to have time play tricks on you. Somewhere in your mind you know how much time has passed. But it _feels_ like…minutes."

"I knew I'd find you, though," John smiles genuinely. It has been a long time since he smiled so freely around someone who wasn't Gramps. It's the smile of his that he can't really control. It creeps upwards on the right side of his mouth and is pulled thinly to the left. "I never got to answer."

"You remember," the Doctor smiles her sweet, kind of secretive smile. John just opens his mouth when a clatter is heard a few stories below them. She curses in her mind but urges them both onward. "Come on!"

The two find an open level and dash in, only to halt in their tracks. The Doctor still holds John's hand, trying to usher him behind her. He refuses, however, though he doesn't step in front of her either.

"Well then," Miss Foster approaches them, taking her glasses off in the process. Her armed guards stand behind her at either side; "at last."

"Hello," John says and waves before his instincts can tell him otherwise. '_Male instincts, always a bit of a delay, me thinks._'

"Lovely to meet you. I'm the Doctor," she says smoothly.

"And I'm John," he ads for lack of anything else to do.

"Partners in crime," says Miss Foster. The two share a look, seeming to actually like that title very much. "And otherworlders, judging by your Sonic technology."

"Oh, yes!" the Doctor declares, only letting go of John's hand to find her Sonic. As she holds it in one hand her other pulls out another sonic something, this one looking to be just a pen. "Interesting, you have a sonic pen. It's a good design, really: sleek."

"Very," John nods, though his wildly hooked eyebrows betray his calm demeanor, "sleek."

"And engraved, for Matron!…Cofelia, Nursery Fleet," the Doctor looks up. "The wetnurse for the Adiposian first family. Using humans as surrogates…_yet_ this is a level five planet, which makes this a violation of intergalactic law."

The Matron does seem to take this into consideration, if only to laugh at it. "Is that a threat, Doctor?"

"It's a chance to call this off before I have to stop you," she says calmly.

"Yeah, I'd avoid that if I were you," John puts in meekly.

The Doctor folds the comment into memory for later with a sigh. She supposes she can't blame John. He saw the worst of her that first day, and he deserves the same chance to back out as anyone else. Maybe it's a good thing he never answered, she laments.

"Let's see you avoid this," the Matron nods for her cronies to cock their guns.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait," the Doctor holds her hands out, entirely too aware of how John has already stepped to protect her. They obey and she steps from behind John's form carefully. "Did you know that when two Sonics meet each other it creates an earsplitting frequency?"

"Yes," answers the blond alien.

"Oh," the Doctor quirks the bottom right corner of her lip downward. "Hum, right, well then, what about if you snap a sonic in half?"

The effect is most helpful. As the Matron's sonic pen is snapped in half it releases a small explosion of energy. It's enough to let John and the Doctor make their escape without fear of gun fire. The Doctor hears the words "premature labour" and hurries to find the center of the activities. "John, where is the center of this building layout wise?"

"Um," he thinks, "that would probably be…a storage room in the basement where I used to sit and read!"

"Really, John, on the job?" the Doctor teases.

"Do you know how boring it is to be a temp?" he jabs back lightly.

"Here we go," the Doctor rushes into the cupboard, clearing everything out hastily.

"Ooh, spies in the supply closet, I like it," John grins.

"Centralized inducer," says the Doctor, "this is what she's going to use to turn every human connected to Adipose into blobs of fat."

"Fat?" John squints a bit.

"Adipose: it's an alien, actually. An Adipose is an animated body made up of pure living fat. The Matron plans on using humans as breeding grounds for the next generation. No idea why the Adiposians would risk the crime, though."

"Maybe the nursery isn't done yet," John shrugs in a partial attempt at humor (and mostly him just saying things aloud as they come). He guesses it's not right since the Doctor remains working in silence. This is the opportunity he has been waiting for, though. "So, how long was it to you?"

The Doctor chooses her answer carefully. "Three minutes at best."

"Is it because you're an alien?" John asks plainly.

"Not entirely, no," the Doctor offers a small laugh. John has become quiet and her voice has gone velvety soft to match the ambiance. "I'm a Time Lord; rifts in time usually don't have much on effect on us."

John feels the need to continue. "I think I knew it hadn't been a year, even though I could remember it all—see it all in my head. I remember having to explain to Mum and Granddad that Nerys went on the honeymoon without me. I remember living at home again for months before this job popped up. Countless nights of boring, average life, passing by in, I guess, milliseconds. I've wanted to find you, though, all this time. I remembered you asking me to go with you and then all of a sudden I was eating burnt toast for two meals a day and dealing with a heretofore unknown aversion to spiders."

"I really am sorry, John," the Doctor looks at him with compassion misting through her eyes and into his heart and soul. "I know how you must have felt."

John shoves his hands in his pockets - a habit he feels he must have picked up from her - and takes a (big) risk. "I missed you."

Now, the Doctor stops. She looks away from the alien technology and gives her undivided attention to her Earthboy. She tries not to rejoice, or let it show that she's ecstatic over their shared fondness for each other. "I missed you too."

"Wasn't it only a couple minutes for you?" John raises his left eyebrow a bit higher than the right and smirks, leaving his mouth open.

"Well, yeah," the Doctor turns back to working now, her hair blocking John's view of her face. "All the same, though."

"So, you didn't pick up any other companions while I was living a year's worth of three minutes?" John finds he sounds only a little overly curious at it. "What about that guy whose blazer I found on the TARDIS?"

"His name," the Doctor sounds out slowly, but doesn't stop typing and pulling and fiddling. "His name was Lee. He was my first companion in travelling. Basically, I lost him after an incident on a far off planet. He's there, now, and hopefully living the life I programmed for him."

"What does that mean?"

"Then there was Shaun, briefly. He was a great chap, and I hope he's doing well. He should be a doctor, by now, actually. It's funny, really, at least he thought it was. He's good, now, he's…well, he's gone too."

"So, it's just you," John finishes for her.

"Yeah, just me," she sighs.

"Is it always men you bring along?"

"Oi!—I ain't some outer space tart you big dunce!" The Doctor offers John a light slap on the arm before connecting another two wires.

"I never wanted to insinuate that you were!" John protests, rubbing where she slapped. "I just, y'know, wanted to think I already had an application…going for me!"

"You're not applying to temp school, John," the Doctor rolls her eyes, without adding that he always has a place on the TARDIS if he wants it.

"Yeah, there's no such thing," he clarifies for her.

An alien kind of mechanical sound starts up and the Doctor recoils. "She's started the program!"

"How do we stop it?" John asks, but the gears are already in overdrive in the Doctor's head. She seems to think at a million times the speed of a human. Even her lips seem to ghost a million words per minute. "Doctor, tell me what you need!"

"I need one of those remote capsules to reroute the signal from emergency conversion to advanced gradual transmortification or every client of Adipose is going to be reduced to infantile fat creatures!"

Although this isn't the time to be impressed at her ability to spew even more words than he can in mere seconds, he is. He also pulls the sample he grabbed out of his flannel shirt pocket, smooth as 007 himself. Her eyes look from it to his and light up like the sunrise. She's quick to rewire it with the machine in the wall and things shut down. It's quiet for just a moment before it starts up again, this time, with a nonthreatening blue light to it. Symbols float in a multidimensional script on the monitor.

"Adiposian first family," the Doctor says to herself.

"They figured out you've been messing with their breeding program?" John dares to ask.

"No, they know it's a crime, no one risks the Shadow Proclamation for a baby boom," the Doctor looks at the symbols intently. "They're sending a representative."

"Ooh, am I gonna see an Adipose?" John perks at the idea.

"Yep," the Doctor pops the 'p' and takes his hand, "come on, Johnny-boy!"

—

After the Adiposian representative has come on gone - great fun, meeting and talking with an animated ball of fat - John reflects. In one day he experienced an entire year of life, both with and without the Doctor. It has been varied results for John Smith.

The Doctor has been awfully quiet on the walk back, her hands back in those pockets of hers. Though the blazer is rather becoming she misses the pockets of her usual coat, bigger on the inside as they are. She is gravely silent until she stands before the TARDIS and turns to John. "John, listen…you don't have to."

John frowns and feels hurt coiling in his chest. "You don't want me?"

"I didn't say that," she shakes her head. "What I mean is…you've seen horrible things. After one day with me, you've seen…things I really wish you hadn't. You witnessed the second death of an alien empire."

"They were going to kill everyone on Earth," John protests but when she gestures he lets her continue.

"You saw me," the Doctor feels her throat constrict. She feels embarrassment and shame and fear all deep within the cold ball of ice that encases at least one of her hearts. "You saw me at some of my worst, John, and I don't want you to have to see that again. So, I'm giving you a chance. You've at least seen that: that everyone deserves a choice. So, I'm giving you the choice to back out of this, no hard feelings."

"None of that was your fault, you know," John approaches slowly. Still, the Doctor looks…apologetic. She has the repentant look of a person who has done wrong and wishes to right it without knowing how.

"Shaun," the Doctor begins. It hurts, considering how fresh this wound is. She really did like Shaun, might have even loved him, just not like he wanted. He loved her and she wasn't ready to love him. She wanted to, oh, did she ever want to love him, she just couldn't. "His name is Shaun Temple, and he's with his family now. He chose to leave."

"Why?!" John asks with such bewilderment it's both offensive and flattering.

"He loved me, and every time I rebuffed his affections it hurt him. The one thing I never want for my companions if for them to be hurt. I want them to see the stars, and live their life to the fullest potential. I can't bear it when they're hurt and I was the one who hurt him."

"Doctor, love is a fickle thing, especially with humans." John sighs. He has contemplated love himself. Sure, he wasn't exactly in love with Nerys but maybe a part of him did love her. The very human part of him that wanted to love her more than he really did, just so his cold, aching heart had something to beat for. That is very human. "I assure you, there are risks in any experience in life, and I'm willing to take them. I want to live an extraordinary life, and that life means risking whatever is normal for you. I'm ready for that."

The Doctor smiles. '_John Smith, you don't know how extraordinary you already are. One of a kind, and one of a million, but you are certainly not average._' "Well, shall I ask again, then?"

"Please," he nods.

"Come with me," she says with a tiny element of askance in her voice.

"Allons-y!"


	3. The Fires of Pompeii

"Ancient Rome!"

John steps out in absolute wonder. Around him are bustling people in togas, bartering and yelling. The market is positively alive with sounds and smells, all steaming up into the air above his head in a banquet for his senses.

"Well, at the moment, it's newly established Rome, I guess," the Doctor mutters with a diplomatic nod of her head. She joins John by his side, delighted by his wonder. She can barely contain her excitement at his enthusiasm.

"This is amazing! I mean, this is Rome—Ancient Rome! Regular John Smith, just out for a jaunt about an ancient civilization!" John practically taps his heels together at it all. He's flexing his fists like normal but it's in a joyful expression. "This is brilliant!"

The Doctor is only a little surprised when John leaps to her to take her into a hug. She's not unhappy about it at all, though. She giggles a little when he rocks her about in his arms before pulling away.

"Wait, why is that sign in English?" John's mouth quirks into a cross between a pout and a sneer. "Are we in Epcot?"

"Wh—no, it's the TARDIS! She has translation circuits; she translates for us, reading, speech-"

"What about writing? So, I'm speaking Latin right now? What if I write or say something actually in Latin? What would happen?" John continues to ask with unbridled curiosity.

"No idea; yes; don't know; you have to ask the hard stuff, don't you?" the Doctor looks less annoyed and more impressed at his motormouth than anything.

"Haven't you been here before?" John quirks his head as he and the Doctor continue to walk. Of all places, he supposes an ancient human establishment might not be on the top of her list, being alien and all. He thinks it's fascinating still!

"Once or twice," she murmurs, dodging the question and continuing through the winding streets. "I never got a proper look around, though."

"Well, let's have at 'er!" John strides along. The sleeves of his button down are between his fingers as he rushes as if he needs to relieve himself.

"Walk around like that and they'll think you've gone nuts," the Doctor follows more slowly.

"Won't my clothes make them think that already?" John rounds a corner and finally sees an opening in the city. Rather than the Colosseum, or the Pantheon, or even the seven hills of Rome there's just one big one. "One big, white…smoking mountain; doesn't that make this…?"

"Pompeii," the Doctor gasps behind him. "This is Pompeii."

As soon as she has said the word the ground shakes. It rumbles beneath them and creates vibrations that rattle their teeth. "And it's volcano day."

John looks at the Doctor, who looks genuinely worried. It's not a worry that he has seen in her before, like when she thought the Adisposians were going to kill everyone, or when the Racnoss Empress said she would take over the Earth. This is a dark kind of fear. "Doctor, what is it?"

"We need to get out of here, now!" The Doctor takes John's hand before dashing off. He's not used to running (skinny bloke, he is) and is actually a bit clumsy. Still, he keeps up with her, navigating the crowds and cobblestones. The streets look familiar once again and the Doctor finds the corner where they parked the TARDIS. "Oh, don't tell me… "

"Don't tell you what?" John jogs up, only to find the TARDIS gone. "Oh, don't tell you that. Um, well, you seem to have found out all on your own."

"Oi, don't get clever in Latin," the Doctor frowns at him. She sees the vendor across the street and dashes over. "Excuse me, yes, the big blue box that was parked over there, it's _gone_!"

"Oh, yeah, sold it for a pretty price," the vendor smirks, glancing up and down the Doctor on the word 'pretty'. "Want in on the profit, then, my lovely?"

"Ooh, I oughtta," the Doctor feels John pulling her away from the vendor.

"Right, could you just tell us who bought it, please?" John wrings his hands together while the Doctor runs her tongue along her teeth. She glances at his hands and chuckles something about a "tactile fixation".

"Oh, fella named Caecilius, on Foss Street," the vendor points. "Where you two from? Your woman's got some gall to walk about with legs bound in cloth, eh?"

"Ehm, she's not my-mine-not my woman," John shakes his head frantically. If the Doctor can hear them she's likely to clobber either or both of them back to the future.

"Foss street, then, come on, Earthboy," the Doctor rolls her eyes. She's already cross with herself she doesn't need a reason to be angry with John. '_Oh, you're just a great, big, outerspace_ **_dunce_**_, you are,_' she berates herself. How could you miscalculate like this? Well, sure, maybe it happens on occasion, but usually it's a fun miscalculation!—not a fixed-point-in-time-and-deadly miscalculation. Now she has to get John out of here as soon as possible. It's not just that he's in irreversible danger, but there's a danger in itself of John-

"Doctor, aren't we going to warn them?"

'_There it_ _is_,' the Doctor groans in her head. It's not hard to guess the plethora of questions from John Smith. He's a very bright lad, despite what he thinks. He knows what's going to happen to this city. He's also compassionate, and that might be the death of all of them; "no."

"What do you mean? You're the Doctor, you save people!" John comes very close to whining like a child. When she remains stoic he digs his heels into the ground (which proves useless, given her alien strength) and yanks his hand from hers. "You change lives!"

"Not this time! There is nothing I can do. Pompeii is a fixed point in history, meaning that what happens will happen one way or another. There's no stopping it, therefore, we are leaving!" The Doctor snaps at her stubborn companion. Yet he remains rooted to the ground, staring her down easily.

"You can but I'm staying!" John puffs out his chest before really listening to his words. Even after he hears how crazy they are he doesn't take them back.

"Are you kidding me? You're not staying, Earthboy, that's final!" The Doctor feels ready to pull her hair out with this stubborn human. He cannot seriously intend to stay and burn to death just to contest something out of his control! That sounds more like something she would do.

"Says you?" John asks with both brows raised.

"Time Lord: me; TARDIS: mine, yes I say so!" The Doctor all but roars at him like a lioness.

"Human: me; free will: mine, I'm staying!" John crosses his arms in a physical show of defiance. "If you won't then I'll tell them myself!"

"Sure, be the crazy lunatic in weird clothes preaching about the end of the world!" The Doctor bellows. She will not have this. It's one thing to argue with a human, it's another to have him insist on changing a fixed point. It's beyond him, she knows that, but that doesn't mean she has to let him die for it. "TARDIS, now, we are getting out of here."

"I beg to differ, Spacegirl!" John bellows back, but follows only to try and continue to convince her. He knows that the Doctor isn't as cold as she wants him to think. Surely it's not beyond her compassion to save - okay, maybe not the whole of Pompeii - at least somebody. She must want to, he decides. A fixed point in history: whatever happens can't be stopped. That makes sense, he concedes. She can't go interfering in every historical event ever, or nothing would ever be the same. He's not a quantum whatever but…y'know: physics…physicsphysicsphysicsphysicsphysicsphysics physicsphysics…

"I bet you would," she shouts back at him. She doesn't have to look back to know that he's still with her. There's something frightening and comforting in that. It doesn't take long to get to Foss Street, even if the ground does shake. John is awfully quiet the whole time. She tells herself it doesn't bother her, the silent treatment from John, but she is unable to deny that she is pouting.

"Excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm closed for today!" a man with grey hair waves at the two of them as soon as they enter his doorway. "I'm expecting nobility!"

"Oh, that's me!" the Doctor startles the poor man. "I am…Nobilis!"

"I beg your pardon?" the grey haired man squints.

"There's your answer: actual Latin is a no-go," the Doctor spares John a fleeting look of irony before turning back. "I am…la Donna Nobile, of…Messina."

"Ah, from fair Messina, my Lady," Caecilius bows to nobility and kisses the ring on her right hand.

"And I'm…Signore…Nobile," John shakes Caecilius's hand, who only seems puzzled at the custom.

"Pardon my friend he's from…Padua," the Doctor rolls her eyes.

"Isn't that Shakespeare?" John asks but is thoroughly ignored.

"Ah, my Lady and my Lord, I am yet expecting," Caecilius is also ignored as the Doctor moves toward the modern art he purchased at purchased at market today. "How may I help you?"

"This, here, uh," the Doctor knocks on the door for show, "this is interesting, innit though? I may have to take it off your hands, I'm afraid. It's stolen goods, you see. My Lord…Leonato will be expecting it."

"Okay, that is definitely Shakespeare," John shakes his head. He glances at the man, Caecilius, and his wife and son. "Lovely family, you have."

"For shame, Quintus, greet the Nobile," Caecilus smacks his son up the head, much to the boy's chagrin.

"My dad used to do that to me too," John smiles at the young man.

"Signore," Quintus bows, but finds instead that the man shakes his hand.

"Call me John," he smiles widely.

"Odd name," Quintus mutters to himself before bowing to the lady. "My Lady Noble."

"I quite like that," she chuckles while still inspecting her darling blue box.

"Not that you have an ego or anything," John rolls his eyes. "Well, since my Lady is so ingenious, shouldn't she share with Caecilius the wisdom of tomorrow?"

"I confess nothing," the Doctor glares solidly at the defiant Earthboy.

"Nor I deny nothing," John holds up his hands to the nice Italian family. "I'm just saying, shouldn't they…come to Messina with us, to meet with Leonato? If we're going to take Caecilius's stuff he should at least get a holiday out of it."

"The prince's jester would do well not to speak out of turn," she snarls at him.

"Oh, you should get out for a day, though, maybe go to the hills!" John grins, hands in his jeans pockets.

"Why, Signor, we haven't even paid tribute to the household Gods," the Doctor takes John by the shoulders and ushers him over to the house shrine. She flicks water to the marble carving then, after making sure no one can see, in John's eyes. "Stop it, John, there's nothing I can do for them. Vesuvius will burst tomorrow no matter what."

"We could still save them, and I know you want to. It doesn't have to be the whole city, maybe just one family can be enough. How old is that boy, sixteen? He could burn to death tomorrow." John whispers, but with every ounce of emotion poured into it as he can muster. He knows - he can see it in his eyes - how much she wants to save them. "Just them; not everyone, but just someone."

"I can't and you know it, now stop it," the plea is weaker than she would like. It seems John just has that effect on her. Her guilt is an annoying trait she likes to blame on her human companions. She wishes she could save this family, but she has never even stuck around this long for a fixed point in time. There's never any helping so why look back just to see the bloodshed?

"Announcing Lucius Petrus Dextrus!"

The Doctor and John look up to see an older man wearing robes enter. He practically oozes narcissism out of his every pore. Caecilius approaches in all friendly manner and even he is off-put by the older man's air.

"Wonder what crawled up his ass and died," the Doctor mutters.

"Maybe he knows what's happening tomorrow," John quips.

"All right, we're leaving," the Doctor takes John's shoulder rather firmly and begins marching them to the TARDIS. Only a quick glance over her should—wait a minute. "That's different."

"My Lord Lucius was very specific," says Caecilius.

"You designed it?" the Doctor asks, though she chooses to ignore Lucius's visage of disgust for his sake.

"It was a vision foreseen, given to me by the Gods!" Lucius snaps at her.

"It looks like a circuit," John says next to the Doctor.

"They speak oddly," a new voice greets the room. A young woman stumbles in, sallow in complexion with red around her tearful eyes. "Those two, from far away, they use words of trickery."

"Oh, Evelina," Caecilius's wife Metella rushes to her child's side. "I beg you excuse my daughter, she has been consuming the vapours."

"Another with the gift," Lucius approaches Evelina's frail appearance.

"She is promised to the Sibyline Sisterhood," says Metella.

"The prophesies of women are limited and dull," Lucius begins, only to be cut off by the Doctor's dismissive pointing finger.

"What do you mean by consuming the vapors?" she asks Evelina.

"They give me strength," the girl wobbles with the words.

"Oh, sweetheart, I don't think so," the Doctor frowns, dismayed at the condition of the young girl.

"Is that your word as a doctor?"

"I beg your pardon?" the Doctor makes sure to school her face so Lucius can't see her surprise and worry. Even as Vesuvius's rumbling starts up again she makes no movement.

"Doctor, that's your name, I know," Evelina looks dead in the eyes of the strange woman before looking towards John. "And you're a Smith."

"You told me of no such trade," Quintus looks at the brown haired man.

"A female soothsayer is inclined to invent all sorts of vagaries," Lucius sneers at Evelina and the Doctor in twain.

"Not this time, mate, you've been out-soothsayed." The Doctor snaps at him, but never lets her eyes leave Evelina's.

"Do not overspeak me," Lucius glares at her, "woman of Gallifrey."

More rumbling comes but the Doctor ignores it—ignores everything. "What's that now?"

"Your hair, like the grass of another world. That world is lost in fire, is it not?" Lucius doesn't stop. "I have the gift of Pompeii. I know the absolute truth of truths. Doctor, he is returning."

"Who is he?"

"And you, son of London," Lucius pauses only a second, looking at John intently, "you are not who you think you are."

"Doctor, what's happening?" John asks, deeply afraid of the suffocating tension. He gets no answer, though. The Doctor is paralyzed, watching Evelina's hollow, glassy eyes.

"Even the word doctor is false," she says. "Your name is hidden, yet so clear. It lives in the stars, in the cascade of Medusa herself, yet also in this world…in this life; in this very day, your name lives. You are of nobility. You are a Lady…of Time."

John glances at the Doctor for a split second, wondering how Evelina could know that. The Doctor is still frozen, until everything comes to a stop. The rumbling stops, the air lightens and Evelina collapses to the ground.

"Evelina!" Metella cries frantically for her daughter. She looks between the strangers. The woman is supposed to be from another world, and a doctor! The man is a smith from a place called London? "Help her, I beg of you!"

"You're the doctor!" Caecilius comes over in equal flurry.

"I'm not that kind of Doctor," she mutters, figuring no one is listening to her.

"You're not even of this world, according to Lucius!" Quintus goes from shouting accusative at the Doctor to gesturing to where Lucius was. "If you are a doctor, of any world, then help her!"

"Get her into a cool room, with an open window, so she can breathe." The Doctor gives John a glance before following Caecilius, carrying his daughter, away. "John, you and Quintus have a look around, would you?"

"Anything for m'lady," John quirks his right eyebrow but turns to Quintus anyway. "Can you show me where this Luicus lives?"

The Doctor smiles, thankful John is still willing to be her companion despite their disagreement. She honestly didn't find much disagreement in Lee or Shaun. They were both pretty ready, willing and able to follow her words to the letter. It was sometimes a bit hindering, actually, to have her word put on a pedestal like that: made it very hard to see her own mistakes until it was too late.

"She didn't mean to be rude," Metella speaks softly, stroking her daughter's forehead. "She's ever such a good girl."

"What's wrong with her arm?" the Doctor asks. She almost dare not break the serenity of the darkened room.

"An irritation of the skin. She never complains, bless her, but we bathe it in olive oil every night," says Metella.

"Is that," the Doctor breathes. She approaches cautiously, wary of the power that gives Evelina into such things of which she should never know. There is no reason for her to know of the Medusa Cascade, or of her name, certainly.

"You are a doctor, and from far away," Metella turns pleading, "can you tell what it is?"

The Doctor runs two fingers along the grey length of Evelina's wrist. It's cold and solid to the touch. She looks at Metella, rightfully worried for her daughter. "It's stone."

"Skin like stone," Metella shakes her head.

"No, Metella," the older (by centuries) woman corrects her. "It's not like stone, it is stone."

"B-but how," Metella whimpers, taking in shaky breaths. "The Gods, they were speaking through her. She saw their truths, their wisdom!"

"You shouldn't rely so heavily on the words of unseen Gods, Metella," the Doctor says, though she knows it's blasphemous. This culture will revere their Gods the way any culture at this stage would. "I am not saying to doubt them, but I am saying to believe a little more in yourselves. Humans are capable of great things, and the Gods may help, but you created this city on your own. You were able to build and rebuild on your own, with the Gods looking on you with fortune, but you did this."

Metella regards the strange woman contemplatively. She is from another culture, so her mistrust of the Gods is forgiven. There's something about her, though, that is otherworldly, like the Gods. Her hair, like fire, Lucius said—no, like the grass of another world. Far away indeed, Metella thinks. "Firstly, though, my Lady Doctor, you must be clothed properly."

"Oh, no, it's," the Doctor shakes her head, decided it best she not mention that her clothes are all inside the weird blue box still in Metella's foyer.

"No, come," the curly haired woman leads the Doctor down the hall. She opens the wooden doors and files through robes. After several minutes of debate and glances at the Doctor, each making her more nervous than the last, "this one!"

The Doctor is handed a soft, purple thing. It should drape to her ankles, though she might have to make adjustments. "Thank you, Metella, but it's too kind of you."

"Doctor, please, if you are attending to my daughter then I insist you at least be dressed as a woman of your status should be."

The Doctor sighs and simply steps behind the changing screen obediently. Metella at least leaves the room, though the screen basically gives her permission to come back in any time she likes. It gives the Doctor some time to think, at least. She still has this dilemma to deal with. John will not let her leave without saving someone, she knows. She just doesn't know how it will affect things. She has never saved anyone from a fixed point in time, ever. Oh, but she wants to, she really does. This poor girl, only seventeen years old, and her arm is turning to stone.

Once the toga is on the Doctor frowns at herself. It fits poorly, as she expected. It hangs over her bust, falling around her in a circumference like a shower curtain. She reaches for the Sonic and a string of gold. Once she has pulled it around her under her breasts, she Sonics it into the fabric. That's better, she thinks as the toga forms like a dress, with a proper waistline.

"My Lady," Metella enters again as soon as the Doctor has stepped out from behind the screen. "Oh, my Lady, that is most becoming. The Signor will surely love it."

The Doctor scoffs a laugh, casting her eyes downward with a self-conscious smile. "I'm sure he'll have a field day, seeing me in this."

"Why would he seek the fields because of the cloth you wear?"

The Doctor shakes her head again. She's really gotta watch what she says and how she says it. "He should be finding some things for me as we speak. Please, I beg your pardon, but I must investigate the fumes Evelina breathes."

Metella nods and lets the Doctor pass. Once she is in the main room again Caecilius is waiting for her. "Help me with the hypocaust, would you?"

"Doctor, what news of my daughter?" he asks like any good father would.

"She will be all right," is all the Doctor tells him. She stares down into the blaze, red and orange light reflecting on her pale skin and into her already flaming hair. "This feeds into Vesuvius itself, aye?"

"Yes, the soothsayers thought of it seventeen years ago after the great earthquake," says Caecilius.

"Seventeen years ago," the Doctor mutters. '_And this man has no idea that his daughter was hand picked by that event to foresee terrible futures._'

"It did a lot of damage, but we rebuilt."

"What's that noise," the Doctor asks as an awful wailing comes from below.

"Don't know, but it happens all the time." Caecilius meets the Doctors eyes. "Some say the Gods of the underworld are stirring."

"Sure, and I'm not a fan of football," the Doctor mutters before she can stop herself again. Luckily Caecilius remains silent, probably trying to figure out what she has just said. She scrapes the side of the hand carved vent with her nail. "After that earthquake, I'm guessing the soothsayers started making a lot more sense."

"Oh, yes," Caecilius nods eagerly. "Their imprecise predictions were no more. Suddenly they could all predict crops and rainfalls with absolute accuracy."

"And none of them have mentioned tomorrow?"

"No, should they?" Caecilius regards the odd Doctor woman as she lets dust fall through her fingers. "They're breathing in dust?"

"Tiny particles of rock," _volcanic ash;_ "they're breathing in Vesuvius."

—

"So, you are the Lady Doctor's servant?" Quintus asks for complete lack of a better subject. The silence is maddening, between the sounds of the night and the cracking of John the Smith's knuckles.

"Ha, not likely," John barks a laugh. "I'm not her errand boy, I'm her…companion."

"So, you are her assistant," Quintus smirks as he sees John squirm. "I'm not wrong, I see."

"Assistant is a fine word, I guess," John mutters as they arrive at a window.

"Do you not devote your life to her?" Quintus continues his interrogation as John climbs up with all the grace of a newborn goat.

"I suppose you could say that," he answers in an irritated tone.

"Do you abide by her word and respect it?"

"Yeeeees," John hisses in the dark, attempting to turn himself over.

"Do you travel with her, rest with her, and live with her, never to stray from her side?" Quintus waits patiently while John flops through the window the way you spit out the pimento in an olive.

"Pass me the torch!" John whispers.

"Answer the question," Quintus combats.

"Fine, yes, yes, all yes, now torch me!" John only gets a smug grin as Quintus tosses him the torch and easily crawls up himself.

"So in what ways are you _not_ bound to the Lady Doctor for life?"

"I….don't know how to answer that," John finally admits honestly. He turns to see the tablet that is carved like a circuit board from earlier. "Okay, so he's got a bunch of different marble carvings of circuitry, but what for?"

"The future, John of the Smiths," Lucius barges in, "we are building the future!"

"Oh, well, it's all out of order, Lucius," John fumbles over. He moves the blocks, like puzzle pieces. "I might not have the Doctor's special brand of crazy brilliance but I did work as a temp in a computer shop for six months! This goes here - and let me tell you - and that there - what this does! It's an energy converter!"

"A what?" Quintus blurts.

"Never mind that," John looks at Lucius, who is stony as ever. "So, Lucius, why do you have replicant technology so far beyond your future? Who designed it? Is it whatever alien made your arm all crackly? I can hear the sound of stone grinding when your shoulder moves, and I'm guessing that's what happened to Evelina—to all the soothsayers!"

"You insult the Gods!" Lucius booms.

"You disgrace the Gods!" John counters as he dives for Lucius's cloaked hand. He feels the solidity of stone and snaps it off. "Ha!—unarmed at last!"

"Get him!"

"No, no, no!" John kicks the stand holding the carvings, forcing them to ground. "Quintus, run!"

The younger boy tosses the torch to the guards, immobilizing them well enough.

"Did you see that?" John asks with a Cheshire grin as they run. "I did that whole foiling bad guys thing all on my own! I don't need the Doctor for that!"

"So you really don't ever leave her side, then?" Quintus questions while also running like a madman.

"Oh, bugger off," John frowns. He hears a booming coming. It's different than before, though. It's not the rumbling of the mountain, or the vibration of tectonic energy. No, this is rhythmic and steady.

"Is it the mountain?" asks Quintus.

"No," John thinks hard on it, "It's more like…footsteps!"

The two take off running again, John in the lead. The Doctor would be well impressed if she could see him now. Never mind that, though, he thinks as he keeps running. Bursts of steam and smoke follow them as they round bends and corners. Quintus barely avoids a rather heavy burst of steam. "It's following us!"

John bursts into Caecilius's home first, closely followed by Quintus. "Caecilius, everyone, get out!"

"What's happened?" he asks, walking out with his wife.

"John, what's going on?" the Doctor asks, instantly by his side as he tries to catch his breath.

"I think we're being followed," he puffs in disbelief. Soon enough the vent bursts and the stone around it cracks open like an egg. A monster of molten lava and rock hauls itself from the ground, growling ferociously. "Doctor, what is that thing?!"

"It's a carapace of stone! It's a foot soldier made of rock and held together by lava!" The Doctor gets John to his feet and forces the family back, though Evelina hardly moves. "John, everyone, get water and douse that thing with it!"

John and Quintus grab the closest urns they can find. The Doctor reaches for one but finds her arms and wrists grabbed. One hand covers her mouth while the another figure appears in front of her. She feels herself being dragged, backwards, down streets and alleyways. Soon she is underground. A chamber, filled with torches and flame, swirls with unearthly energy.

"You have got be kidding me," she curses. Flat on her back, she can see the humanly drawn replica of the Sibyline facial features. Her wrists are bound, and as much as she would love to Sonic them it…it's back at Caecilius's (oh, isn't that wizard?).

"The false prophet will surrender the blood and breath of another world," one sister declares, holding a long knife in her hand.

"I'll surrender you in a minute, there, darlin'—don't you _dare_!" the Doctor struggles against her bonds. She doesn't like being held captive by humans on a flippin' bed of stone and fur, and she certainly doesn't like having her hearts exposed like this. "Let me go!"

"You will be silent in the temple of Sybil!" the brunette snaps.

"You know I met the Sybil once," the Doctor interjects. "Hell of a woman really, absolutely lovely. Honestly, I think she might have had a thing for me. 'Fraid I don't play that team but I was flattered nonetheless. Let me tell you, she would ashamed of you lot, smearing her religion! That a human idea, spreading word by knife point?"

"A knife that welcomes the hearts of Time!"

"Um, if I may interrupt!"

The sisters all recoil in shock of a man entering the temple. The Doctor just breathes in utter relief to see John Smith. He hardly looks like he's sure of himself, but there is a confidence in him she quite likes. She really must send him on his own more often!

"No man may enter the temple of the Sibyl!"

"Oh, don't mind me, just us girls," he quips without meaning to be funny, all but tiptoeing over to the Doctor. "You doing all right?"

"Yeah, just wizard," she smirks up at him.

"I like the toga," he smiles genuinely, "it's a good color for you."

"Thanks," she sighs, no longer laughing, "and the ropes?"

"Oh, any man loves some good rope." John speaks without thinking, like he does with every one out of five utterances. "Although they don't match your shoes, so perhaps you'd like this."

The Doctor laughs with delight as John pulls out her Sonic. She then proceeds to gasp as he is able to guess how to use it to undo her bindings. "How could you do that? No one can use my Sonic but me."

"Guess I'm a bit special," John shrugs and smirks.

"You're one of a kind, that's what you are," the Doctor returns his smirk and sits up, rubbing her wrists.

"Show me the Doctor!" a ghastly voice demands.

"Ah, there we are," the Doctor goes back to being, well, the Doctor. "You're behind all this. You're no high priestess, you're not even the Sibyl, are you? No, you're what's manifested inside of her throat and lungs. You're a half a pyrovile, steps away from being like the foot soldier that destroyed Caecilius's home. You fell to the earth but it would have shattered you upon impact. Seventeen years ago an earthquake woke you up, and now you're using humans to reconstitute yourselves. They'll all turn to stone from inhaling the Pyrovilic material that makes up Vesuvius."

"The prophetic one of the blue box, she knows too much!" the brunette with the knife speaks up.

"John, get down that grate," the Doctor orders and also begins moving towards it. "The people of Pompeii are turning to stone before Vesuvius has even erupted."

"Doctor!" John calls and drops down. She's not far behind him, though she must find the toga horribly impractical as of now. Without a word she walks on and he finds her leading him into the heart of the volcano. "Doctor, if they're behind Vesuvius erupting, can't you stop it now?"

"It's still a part of history, John," she grunts angrily.

"How do you tell if something is fixed or in flux or not or whatever?"

"Because that's how I see the universe!—that's how I see everything!" the Doctor bursts at him, eyes, flickering with glowing gold energy. "Every waking second I can see what is, what was, what could be, what must not. That's the burden of the Time Lord, and I'm the last one."

John watches the Doctor turn her back on him and continue walking. "How many people will die, Doctor?"

The Doctor makes what could be seen as a petulant sigh, but John can hear the whisper of voice that it carries. "I can see them all, John. All 20 000 deaths, and I can't save them."

"What if it were only 19 996 deaths?" John asks as gently as he can.

"John, listen," the Doctor turns. "The Earth is at stake, here. These pyroviles need heat to survive: the heat of a volcano. They're building a new civilization and they'll burn the Earth to a crisp to do it. I have to make a choice."

"What do you mean?" John dreads to ask.

"The soothsayers couldn't see the volcano erupting because there is no eruption, just us. The pryoviles had Lucius make an energy converter so they could convert the lava into energy, that's why we can survive down here. There is no eruption of natural lava; I invert the energy, destroying the Pyrovilian empire and destroying Pompeii. It's Pompeii or the world, and I'm the death of it either way."

"It's not fair," John feels his lip tremble.

"No, it's not," the Doctor answers him, still faced away. Some sizzling indicates that her tears are still there, though.

"But your own planet, your home," John continues through his weeping, "it burned."

"Don't you understand?!" The Doctor wheels around on him, finally breaking. That wall she builds around herself, bricks, falling, breaks. She tears through it herself just to get to John. "Can't you see that? If I could change things - if I could save them I would, but I can't! I just can't!"

John struggles to breathe. He can't…he never thought it would be this. How long has she known? When did she figure it out? Why wouldn't she tell him sooner? "What if they can't be stopped?"

"Vesuvius erupted with the force of 24 nuclear bombs," she says over her shoulder, leading into a base that seems alien enough. As she begins working the stone controls her voice becomes quieter and quieter. "Nothing can survive it. Certainly not us."

John sees her pause on a lever that must be activator. Her eyes are so steady, but swimming with emotion at the same time. She has two hearts; he thinks that even with only one it would still be so loving and compassionate there would be room for the whole world in there. And this is the whole world they're facing. "Never mind us."

"Twenty thousand people," the Doctor whispers. Her whole body is shuddering, yet it doesn't waver at all in intention. Her hands grasp desperately.

John moves his hands over hers. He's willing to share in this burden. He is ready to kill 20 000 of his own kind, because it will save billions more. People are taught that it is never acceptable to sacrifice the lives of a few to save the lives of many. He understands why that's wrong now, though. He understands it because everyone of those lives is more than a number. Every one of that number is a person, with a life to live, and he can't spare his own conscience in exchange for even one of them. So he is going to murder 20 000 people, so that every other human being to ever live from 24 August of 79 AD onward.

They push down the lever and the world explodes around them. The center they're standing in jerks under them. The Doctor tries to keep herself upright but her knees feel weak. Her hands are cold and sweaty. She imagines her eyes are deeply hollow. She feels empty.

When they stop moving it's John who moves first. He takes the Doctor's hand, which is disturbingly limp. He leads them out, discovering them back in Pompeii. "I guess it was an alien escape pod or something. Doctor…Doctor?…are you all right?"

The Doctor doesn't answer for quite some time. She lets her hair blow against her face harshly in the ashy wind. Tears streak down her cheeks. "John, find Caecilius and his family and bring them to the TARDIS."

John smiles a bit, but not completely, not with the Doctor still like this. Instead he reluctantly lets go of her chilly hand and dashes to Caecilius's home. Inside, the man and his family are hunched together for protection. Every one of them is crying. "Come with me!"

"Doctor!" Evelina jumps up to the woman who seems not herself. Despite her catatonic appearance she returns Evelina's hug and closes her eyes, as if telling herself that the physical contact is not imagined.

"Everyone, come along. We're getting out of here."

—

"You're always remembered, Caecilius," John offers as a small token. They stand off on a hill, watching Pompeii be covered in enough ash to bury the city for thousands of years. "Pompeii will be found again one day. The Earth never forgets the greatness of this city, or its people."

"The explosion created a rift in time, which gave you and the soothsayers your ability to see," the Doctor speaks softly to Evelina. Both are in tears. "You're free."

Caecilius holds his wife and Quintus holds his sister as they watch their home be destroyed. The Doctor and John move away silently. The Doctor knows all too well what it's like to watch your home burn. John simply can't bear to watch. They enter the TARDIS and waver out of their lives forever.

"Thank you," John hears. He's surprised that the first words the Doctor has been able to say to him are of thanks. "For making me go back…and save them."

"Yeah," is all he can think to say, and nods.

"You said…you said you were ready. You said that you were willing to risk the normal for me so that you could live an extraordinary life. Today you helped me…well, you saved five people today, John Smith, including me. That's pretty extraordinary, I think." The Doctor smiles in an attempt to convey how much she appreciates him as a whole. She appreciates his company, his companionship, his compassion and his conscientiousness. Most of all, she appreciates John. "Welcome aboard."


	4. Planet of the Ood

"Set the controls to random!" the Doctor declares as the TARDIS rolls and twists as she likes. The Time Lady stays upright well enough but poor John is gripping the console for dear life. "Mystery tour; outside that door could be any planet, anywhere - any when - in the whole wi—are you okay?"

John, patting his chest down to see if his one heart is still beating, stands awkwardly. He's shaking nervously, and smiling, but a little green around the gills. "Oh, yeah, just a little terrified, you know."

"I could always take you home," the Doctor suggests in a sarcastic pout. Although it's a joke the very idea scares her.

"What?" John squeaks in what is a very poor catchphrase for him (he really must find another). "Nay, mock not!"

"I know what you're feeling," she softens a bit. "The joy, the fear, the wonder, I get that!"

"After all this time?" John smiles even as the Doctor comes right up to him. She doesn't stand all that much shorter than him, he notices, just enough that she has to get on her toes to hug him.

"Yeah, why do you think I keep going?" The Doctor brings her shoulders up with a bit of a squeal. John matches her enthusiasm and heads for the door. "Shall we, then?"

"Allons-y!" that's a better trademark, he thinks! He scrunches his shirt sleeves in his hands as he marches to the door like a one-man-music-video of 500 Miles (he loves the Proclaimers!). "John Smith, visiting an alien planet! Born in Chiswick, citizen of the Earth! This is just—I mean it's, well, this is just…I don't know what the word is!"

The Doctor watches him head out like a puppy being let loose in the park for the first time. She pulls her leather coat on over her grey sweater dress and jeans. It's soft and familiar, like an old friend's hug. She can't stop smiling. '_He's so cute when he's excited._'

"Blimey, it freezing!" John yelps before he's even all the way out the door. He jumps back inside, arms splayed over the doors that shut behind him. "There's snow out there!—real, proper snow!"

"Take this!" the Doctor tosses a jacket at John, which he catches clumsily. He tosses it on, finding it rather becoming. It's a long thing, beige, trench kind of style and ever so comfortable.

"Ooh, that's lovely, thanks!" John follows the Doctor outside again, who only squints as the light and wind hits her.

"Imagine, of all the planets in all the galaxies, we find this snowy little beauty," she smiles. "What do you think?"

John is about to answer when a noise catches his attention. He glances up to see a rocket; the kind he used to see on the telly when he was a kid with his Gramps. "Blimey, that's a real live rocket! Now that is a proper spaceship, let's see where it's going!"

The Doctor pauses, consciously pouting unhappily. She has a spaceship. What the hell is wrong with it?—it's a damn fine spaceship! Better yet hers is a temple for a Time Lady: a TARDIS. She waits until John has the conscious thought to turn back to her, noting her body language. "You got sommin to say about my spaceship, Earthboy?"

John, recognizing his mistake, pales and starts wringing his hands. "Oh, no, no, no, I mean, that's a rocket-rocket, you know. I mean, yours—you have a-a TARDIS! Yours is a little blue box, and it's compact, and trendy, and cute—like you!"

The Doctor's pout scrunches as she combats a smile. However, it is too strong for her to fight, and it overtakes her whole visage. "Okay, that's a nice save, Johnny-Boy, now let's do some alien planet exploring."

"Brilliant!" John leaps to take the outstretched hand of the Doctor, forgetting about the rocket entirely. '_Smooth, John Smith, real smooth; good thing, too, I think she could have killed you for that one._'

The whole place really is breathtaking. Everything is crystalline, but not blinding. The snow dances in the wind and the blueish rock/ice crystals all around them seem as if you were staring into an entire ocean bottled into polished stone.

John marvels at the beauty of it all. It seems even more special as the Doctor guides him by the hand, taking the time to point out how the clouds move or the structure of certain rock faces. She tosses him a look over her shoulder every couple seconds, just to make sure he's still with her. He always smiles back; this might be the most beautiful thing he has ever seen in his life.

"Wait, do you hear that?" the Doctor doesn't wait for an answer, and brings John with her over a bend. She sees a figure lying in the snow and reaches for her stethoscope.

"What is that?" John asks, aghast at the creature's squidlike face.

"He's an Ood," the Doctor answers shortly. Her hands are already searching for a heart as John kneels next to them. "Talk to him, keep him going."

"I-I'm John," he starts nervously. He doesn't know how to approach this—sorry, _him_. He has never properly spoken with an alien, unless you count Matron Cofelia, who looked human, and he barely spoke to the Racnoss at all. "What's your name?"

The Ood holds up a sphere, that glows as he says, "Designated Ood, Delta 50."

"This is the Doctor, just what you need, eh?" John smiles weakly at the strange creature. "She's the best in the biz, y'know?"

"Easy there, darling, you've been shot," the Doctor speaks in a honey sweet voice, like she were speaking to a child.

"The circle," Delta 50 looks between the two, "the circle must be broken."

"What circle?—Delta 50, what circle?" the Doctor pleads.

The Ood springs back into life, with red eyes and hissing roars. John leaps for the Doctor, blocking her with an outstretched arm. At the same time her hands are on his front, pulling him back. They sit, afraid, as the Ood that once was Delta 50 thrashes wildly. When he quietly slips into death they relax their muscles. Both are breathing heavily, but keep their positions. John feels the Doctor rest her head on his back, in what he assumes is a gesture that means she's glad he's all right. He takes the hand of hers that is on his chest and squeezes to return the sentiment. "He's gone…do we bury him?"

"The snow will do it for us," the Doctor says quietly, sadly. She stands, not hesitating to take John's hand again. He pauses, though, half kneeling and half stood. His one hand stays with her but the other closes the creature's eyes.

"What is he; what is an Ood?"

"They're an alien race that serves humans in the 42nd century. They're mildly telepathic creatures, always in song." The Doctor begins looking about her.

"I couldn't hear any singing," John says to himself, either in apology or self-deprecation.

"His eyes turned red, though. That's not normal for them, and I have a feeling it has something to do," the Doctor pokes her head over a small hill, "with the establishment."

"What establishment?" John follows her up the tiny hill and sees a factory in the distance. "Oh, _the_ establishment, yeah, let's check it out."

The Doctor is stoic as she starts off. She slides back down the hill and takes all of two steps before reaching for John's hand again. He takes it just as wordlessly and the two head off. The silence, neither relaxed nor uncomfortable, gives them time to think.

John thinks over that poor creature. He sang as he was dying. The Doctor could hear a song? Maybe it's a Time Lady thing. Or maybe it's just one of those John Smith things; another super awesome thing that he has missed out on yet again.

"John," the Doctor asks in the same softened voice she had with Delta 50. "Are you all right?"

John looks deep into her eyes but feels that even then she's hiding so much from him. He hears the question but knows there's so much more to it. Even though he knows these things all he says is: "yeah, I'm good."

"There," the Doctor points to where a group of people is assembled. She rushes them over and it becomes more apparent it's like some sort of tour group. There's a woman at the front, speaking, about to lead them in. The Doctor pulls out the psychic paper. "Hello there, sorry we're late, security didn't mind."

"And you are," the girl prompts in an attempt to be polite.

"The Doctor and John Smith," she answers in the same clipped tone.

"Right, welcome Doctor and Mister Smith," the young woman, Solana, welcomes them.

"Why did she say it like that?" John asks once Solana is out of ear shot. He doesn't get an answer, to which he is growing more and more accustomed. Instead of pushing it he allows himself to be led by the Doctor, who takes his arm instead of his hand this time. That's a change, he thinks without displeasure.

Once inside it seems to be like those conferences he has gone to once or twice. Everyone is gathered with food and drink and the representative is making overly stylized pitches to sell you things. Most of the clientele are men in suits, already a few sheets to the wind, and generally unpleasant seeming to John.

"We keep the Ood safe," is one of the assurances Solana gives.

John and the Doctor cast each other weary looks. They don't have to listen to this, but he supposes this isn't the proper time to go all vigilante justice like the Doctor is so good at.

"After all, what is an Ood, but a reflection of us?"

What a closer, the partners in crime think to themselves. John finds great disgust in his own race at the moment. Not that he's always proud of his culture, or his society, but he has never been this displeased to be a human being. Surely, by the 42nd century, they would have better innovations than using alien species as butlers. This business proves him wrong, though. Solana is now talking about variety packages - what like those bleedin' mixes of sugared cereals at the Tesco?! - available.

"How are you today, Ood?" Solana asks kindly enough, but doesn't seem to be aware that the Ood have names.

"All the better for seeing you," the translator ball answers in a sultry woman's voice.

John's eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. He can guess the Doctor is having a similar, if more displeased reaction. She tightens her grip on his arm and that's sign enough for him. As the crowd disperses she brings him over to a platform. Her fingers work over the fiberoptics and bring up a display of space. "Is this where we are?"

"The Ood Sphere," the Doctor answers coolly. She zooms out and red dots appear on the screen, in vaguely asterismic patterns. "It's the year 4126, marking the second great human empire."

"It's 4126," John breathes in amazement. "I kept thinking it was all gonna be over and done with. I mean, we keep hearing about nuclear wars and global warming and wars over water. The bees are disappearing. Now, look at us; we're everywhere. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, are we omnipotent like angels, or…more like a virus?"

"That's a very good question, John Smith," the Doctor says in an equally subdued tone, and he thinks he understands what she must think of them. She's an alien, after all, looks like them but certainly doesn't think like them. How they must seem to her… "The dots indicate Ood distribution systems."

"Across three different galaxies," John moves away from the Doctor and approaches an Ood. She follows close behind. "Don't they get a say in any of it?"

"Let's ask," she taps an Ood on the shoulder. "Excuse me, love, can you tell me something—are you all like this?"

"I do not understand, Miss," the Ood answers in etiquette.

"Do I look single?" the Doctor asks with an indecipherable tone.

"Do I?" John asks, partly for the sake of it. The Doctor's eyes scan down his body and he realizes he probably doesn't look exactly married, with his coat and his flannel and his t-shirt and his jeans and his trainers and his lack of a ringandokayhelookssingle…

"Anyway," the Doctor sighs, "are any of you free?"

"All Ood are born to serve," answers the Ood.

"You can't have been born like that, though," John leans forward a bit. "What were you like, before the humans?"

"The circle," the Ood utters the familiar phrase. "The circle must be broken."

"What circle?" the Doctor asks, reaching out a hand. She's about to brush his rubbery cheek when he's pulled away to his hospitality station. In a millisecond she looks heartbroken, like she's mourning an old friend, before it's gone. "Right, I've had enough of this schmoozing. Got that packet?"

John pulls it out his inside pocket - this coat is magnificent! - and hands it down to the Doctor. "Shall we off the beaten track, then?"

"A rough guide to the Ood Sphere at our disposal," the Doctor is facing away from John but they know he knows that she's smirking that little sneaky smirk of hers. She leads them away easily, out several doors and into the heart of the complex. It's ugly and disgusting away from where they lead the benefactors like cattle. Once on a platform they can see it all. One Ood falls a midst their marching and the crack of a whip breaks the air. The Doctor flinches as if she herself had been hit, "servants… "

"They're slaves," John finishes the painful thought. He also watches in horror as the Ood is whipped back onto its feet and forced to continue. "What do we do?"

"We put a stop to it," the Doctor answers definitively. She trots back down to metallic steps, partly sliding down the rails along the way.

John attempts to do the same but just ends up slipping off one side and stumbling a bit. Several steps below him the Doctor offers him a crooked smile and a brow tilted in worry. Still, it's a sign of alleviation, and he takes it gladly with an embarrassed chuckle. "I'm not really that graceful."

"You won't be starring in any ballets, that's for sure," the Doctor pulls him to his feet by the hand, "but I've seen worse. One bloke I met couldn't even walk two steps without tripping over his own feet. I always figured he'd meet his end walking out of his own house."

"Sounds like me in ten years," John mutters.

"Sounds like you in ten minutes," the Doctor mutters back to him.

John allows himself to get lost in thought. The Doctor is always trying to keep his head above the water, with no thought to her own. She seems so very sad when she sees the Ood, and hears about their abuse. Her voice was so different when she spoke to the Ood it was like a mother speaking to her children. Did she have children? Was she married? He remembers the night of the Racnoss, and how she and the Doctor exchanged words he couldn't hear or understand. But if Gallifrey burned, and the Doctor is the only Time Lord left, wouldn't that mean… ?

The Doctor pulls John back with a whistle that stabs the eardrums. He flinches and turns back to her. She gestures to the door.

"We could really use you at West Ham on saturdays," John notes as she Sonics the door open.

"Oh, I've been once or twice," the Doctor answers in all honesty. When she did is another matter, but she'll cover that another time. They walk into a large warehouse, all concrete floors and steel ceiling. Carriers are stacked all around them like blocks. "Distribution center; each container waiting to be shipped out all across the galaxy."

"So these containers," John forgoes an answer and opens one up. It stinks, like rotting flesh. Are they dying? "How many of them are in here?"

"Possibly a hundred, maybe more," the Doctor admits solemnly.

"We've got this huge empire, and it's built on slavery."

"Always has been," the Doctor snipes. "Who do you think makes your clothes?"

"Is that why you like humans so much? Is it so you can take cheap shots and stay all high and mighty Time Lady with us?" John bites back easily.

The Doctor, although taken a bit aback at John's defense, respects it. It has been awhile since she got that kind of lip from a human, and she has kind of missed it. It would be John Smith to do it, too, "sorry."

"S'all right," John slurs out with one final peeved look before melting a bit, "Spacegirl."

The Doctor smiles a bit, feeling overly relieved Earthboy isn't mad at her. "Ood, please tell me, does the circle mean anything to you?"

"The circle must be broken," all of them light up, one by one, in a matter of two seconds. They speak simultaneously, through those balls.

"That is creepy," John whispers to himself, like he does when Nerys used to make him watch horror movies. "Why must the circle be broken?"

"So that we can sing," the Ood answer, together again.

The Doctor seems to be absorbing something for a second before an alarm starts. She flies out the door with John hot on her heels. Around a corner she skids to a halt in front of a door. "John, this way!"

"Doctor?" John looks behind him and sees no one. Just as he's ready to go back for her a whirring starts up above him. A giant version of the claw in those arcade games follows him. He runs like a madman, really hoping this won't be one of those times he trips over his own two feet. He does manage to elude, running over barrels and through cracks in the freighter crates. Just he thinks he's going to be crushed it stops. it stops but soon two armed guards have him by either arm. "Where is she?!"

"Quiet, Doctor," one barks at him.

'_Why do they think I'm the Doctor?_' John gets led roughly to a crate, from which he can clearly hear the Doctor's voice. '_That's the Doctor. No mistaking that voice._'

"Let me out of here! Where is he? Where is John?! If you hurt him I swear you are gonna wish you were in the Oods' place!"

"You better let her out," John offers to the guards in a light tone, "not for fear of me, but for fear of her." Although, secretly, he wishes they would for fear of him. He hopes that someday he might be useful enough to do some good if he's separated from her. Maybe he'll make enough of himself that he could tell someone to release her solely by his word. Today is not that day, he laments, though.

"Open it," the boss demands.

The door creaks open and the Doctor's swinging fist narrowly misses some faces. On another day she might have clocked them but she focuses only on John, and running towards him. He takes her into his arms, despite the many guards surrounding them with fully loaded weapons. She hugs him tightly. "By God, John, what did they do to you?"

"Nothing I couldn't handle," he promises, just glad to see she's safe and herself, "safe and sound. Never mind me, though, what about them?"

The Ood start filing out, touching the translators to the guards' foreheads, electrocuting them mercilessly. Their eyes glow red, showing they have no more mercy left to be found.

The guards shooting but the Doctor and John both tear out of there. Only once outside do they notice Solana running with them. The Doctor turns to her. "Solana the Ood aren't born like this. A species only living to serve could never evolve so what does the company do?"

"I don't ask," Solana pants.

"Oh, that's how you condone all this, and how you treat the Ood?" John snaps at her while also collecting his breath.

"No one asks, that's how this works," she rebuts.

"Show me where," the Doctor holds the pamphlet out to her. Solana points but the Doctor doesn't bother any further with words. She knows what Solana is, sparing only a look of disgust.

John follows, also not bothering with Solana. Some people just can't take it, he remembers thinking it the day he found the Doctor for the second time. Some people, yeah, he groans to himself. He used to think that all the time about people he knew, when in the end, it seems he just can't separate himself from his own kind enough.

"John, listen," the Doctor tells him as she Sonics the lock on another door. She also seals it behind her but she is intent on a sound that John can't hear. She shines the light onto a cage. John switches a light on and they gasp.

Several Ood sit, huddled in fear in the center of the cage. As John and the Doctor kneel by the bars they scuttle around as much as they can, unable to actually move in any direction.

"They look different," says John.

"They're unprocessed, natural Ood, before the company gets a hold of them," the Doctor tells him gently. When he looks over at her tears start flowing from her eyes. It is without warning or ceremony or sound but she is crying. "You can't hear it, can you, John?"

"What is it?"

"It's their song," she says in a slightly choked voice, "their song of captivity."

John looks on at the Doctor, who cries without any indication of reason. There was no lead up and if it were darker he would never know at all. "Let me hear it."

The Doctor turns to him, searching for signs of un-surety. She finds none in her brave Earthboy. "Face me, John."

He obeys wordlessly, and lets the Doctor reach to him. Her fingers touch his face and he feels a pushing at the edge of his thoughts. She urges him to open his mind. He does. The sound that floods his mind and ears sounds as if the wind itself were crying of its death. He immediately chokes on his own breath. He looks towards the Ood, letting a tear fall freely. One blinks at him, with all the gentle innocence in the world. "Take it away, please."

The Doctor wastes no time in doing so, closing off his mind again. Her tears are still flowing, and she lets them. This is all she can do for them, at the moment, is cry because they can't. The Ood can never cry.

"You," John grasps the bars, looking intently into the eyes of the Ood, "you can still hear it."

"All the time," the Doctor affirms. Her eyes seem to match the Ood's, as dull and lifeless, like hallowed out darkness where light used to live.

John watches his Doctor and the Ood. He thinks he knows what's going on. He thinks the Doctor is connecting with the Ood. She never mentioned anything before but he thinks she might be "mildly telepathic" as she put it earlier. Not all the time though. He never felt her in his mind before. He looks at her hands, clasped around the bars weakly. Maybe it's by touch, he theorizes.

"What have you got there, love?" the Doctor asks as she pulls the cage door open as quietly as she can. Her voice is barely audible as she kneels to them. She smiles as warmly as she can manage given the circumstances. "Please, show me."

The Ood looks dubious and John speaks up. "Friend: Doctor, John, friend."

"Look at me," the Doctor says so melodiously it draws the Ood to her. "There we are, sweetheart, let me see there."

"Is that," John stops, afraid to say the word.

"It's a brain," the Doctor says it for him. "It's a hind brain, like the amygdala in humans, it processes memory and emotion. If you didn't have it you would be like a processed Ood."

"So the company cuts off their brains," John physically forces himself to articulate his disgusted thought.

"And they stitch on the translator," the Doctor continues with him, also finding the trek to vocalization trying. Her tears are still flowing.

"Like a lobotomy," John finishes with a great urge to vomit. The Ood just looks at him, processing both sets of emotion, and manages to look comforting, and sympathetic. This innocent little prisoner looks at John with empathy, as if deeming John the one in need of comfort. "I wanted to see the universe so badly, because I thought it would be so wonderful."

The Doctor hears John's words as if they're in the distance, but she registers what they are, and what's coming.

"I want to go home."

Blind panic hits the Doctor like a slap in the face. She was bracing herself for it and even still it stings and cuts her with a coldness that burns. She wants to take him away, prevent him from seeing this, but she doesn't want him to go. She's selfish enough that she wants him to want to stay with her. She can't though, as she continues to cry and hears John sniffle beside her. She's frozen with fear of losing him.

"They're with the Ood, sir," John hears but neither he nor the Doctor moves. He distantly recognizes that he's being dragged to his feet. He doesn't have the emotional strength to fight. He thought the Doctor might but she looks as desolated as he feels. Should she have more emotional strength for all she sees or less? It doesn't matter, John admits defeat in his head. He sees them shrinking in his vision, still huddled. At least they're being left alone, if only for now.

"Ow," the Doctor's voice finally comes back to her as her handcuffs stab at her skin. John is thrown against his own pole roughly, to the point where his head hits the metal with a clang. "Oi, watch it! Leave him be!"

"Oh, just come out with it already," a man speaks in front of them. "You're photo activists, right?"

"Friends of the Ood," John speaks, "then yeah, I'd say so."

"The Ood were just animals roaming the ice before we came along. They welcomed it — welcomed us!"

"You idiot," the Doctor spits at him with all the subdued ferocity of a lioness, quietly awaiting a kill. "They're born with their brain in their hands. Don't you get it; that makes them peaceful!"

"They'd have to be," John adds. "A creature like that, why it would have to trust anyone it meets!"

"Good one," the Doctor smiles at him, genuine pride in her voice.

"Thank you," John smiles back, his first unbridled smile in hours. "I thought so too!"

"The infection can be sterilized. All we've got is a rogue batch. If we gas the bad livestock we can still recover."

The Doctor bites back her revulsion as she hears a mounting sound. A melody floods her mind and she lets it sweep over her mind like a mournful storm front. Her mouth opens but no sound comes, her mind remaining focused solely on the sound. Why is it overpowering them now, though? She wonders as the alarms go off again. The boss and his croney leave her and John in the room, still cuffed to metal poles.

"Change of plans," Halpen declares, explaining the quarantine situation and his blatant abandonment of hundreds of lives. He smiles a shaky smile, like a man who has nothing to lose anymore.

"There's something else, though," the Doctor cuts him off. Her voice is still quiet, still with the soft precision of a feather quill that could imprint in rock. "A creature with a forebrain and a hindbrain needs a third element to keep them from being at war with themselves. It's connected to the red eye; what is it?!"

"Clever girl," Halpen steps up to the Doctor. He looks downwards at her face with a creepy smile, stereotyically insulting of older, balding men. She looks ready to spit in his face as he raises a hand to brush hair from her cheek.

"Don't you touch her!" John roars at him, fighting with all his might as if he could rip the metal from the wall.

"_It_," Halpen enunciates grossly, "won't exist for much longer." He glances at the Doctor a last time before stepping away, to hers and John's relief, the latter of whom he looks at as he says, "enjoy your Ood."

Once he's gone the Doctor also pulls at her cuffs. She fights viciously but is probably only managing to cut her own skin, John figures during his own wrestle. He glances at her (at a less serious time he could laugh at how foaming-at-the-mouth-angry she looks). "Don't you have some Time Lady universal key or something like that?"

"These are really good cuffs," she offers as an excuse.

"Oh, well, good to have quality," John sighs a little mundanely given the situation. That drains from him, though, as a door opens and red eyed Ood flood in. Those red eyes are entirely devoid of the innocence and gentility the unprocessed Ood possessed. "Uh, Doctor, John, friend!"

"The circle must be broken!" the Doctor adds. As the Ood approach menacingly she repeats and repeats herself, as does John. It seems hopeless though. The Doctor outreaches her mind, desperate to find the Song of Captivity. She touches it mentally, finding the mind of the Ood they met before. Her mind begs them to reach out as well; she begs them to understand. "The circle must be broken!"

"Doctor, John," one Ood regains himself befor the others. His eyes are kind, like those of an Ood should be. He looks between the two humanoids, "friends."

"Yes, friends, that's it, there's lovely," the Doctor coos to them. They respond, like animals recognizing the gentility of a maternal creature. "Thank you, darlings; could you help us out of here, please?"

John has never understood it in a way wherein he could relate, but he understands it as an observer, now watching the Ood take great care with the Doctor. One removes the hand cuffs while another gently rubs the skin of hers that has been reddened and torn. Another Ood removes John's cuffs but he thanks them briefly, still watching the them with her. She has to have been a mother, he thinks, she's too good at this not to have been one.

"Ood, please find a safe place," the Doctor tells them collectively.

'_Sounds just like when Mum used to tell me not to wander from the playground,_' John remarks fondly.

"This will all be over soon," the Doctor promises them. They nod at her in understanding and she takes John's hand. She has them running straight away, ignoring how her wild mess of curls hits John in the face fora second.

"What are we looking for?" John asks as they're running. It's a massacre around them, and he hopes to bring it to a stop. An explosion knocks them forward and off their feet. He blinks through the ashes and the snow falling in his eyes. He glances to where the Doctor flicks some hair away from her face. "Are you all right?"

The Doctor only nods before looking back. An Ood stands over them but he blinks calmly, tilting his head. "Ood, be you peaceful?"

"Hello there; friend?" John waves nervously.

The Ood reaches calmly to the translator. "Please, come with me, Doctor John."

They obey as calmly as possible following Ood (the symbol on his uniform indicates Sigma) quietly. He walks calmly, like a properly programmed Ood would. John begins to wonder how they would act otherwise. Ood Sigma indicates a door, where the Doctor Sonics a lock to let them all inside. The first thing John notices is an eerie red light.

"The Ood brain," the Doctor indicates literally a giant brain, housed by electrical current. It swells and moves as if a breathing organism. "It's a shared mind - the third element - that binds all the Ood together in song."

"So, why would they start breaking free now? I mean, the brain thing is still within the circle," John waves his hand at the giant brain below. He looks to Ood Sigma, who has no more answers than he does. "It's been telepathic all this…time…it's you, isn't it? You're telepathic too."

The Doctor chances a small look at John. He looks confused, and maybe annoyed that she hadn't told him, but it's not disgust at her, so she'll take it. "I'm a touch-telepath. As soon as I made contact with Delta 50 I made a connection with the sentient brain, hooked up to a wavelength that reached all the Ood here. It took them awhile to sync up to my betawaves but they've been without telepathic connection for two hundred years. My mind became a dampener, enough to lower the barrier to a minimum so the Ood brain could communicate again."

"Well, if you're the cause of this I'll just shoot you," Halpen declares, emerging from the shadows. He's still shaky, and manic, and just plain creepy. "It's a shame my first shot will be to kill a beautiful woman, but business is business."

John goes to move the Doctor behind him but she refuses to budge. In the end he needn't fear because Ood Sigma steps in front of them both. "No, Ood Sigma, you need to get out of here."

"Would Mister Halpen like one last drink, sir?"

"What does he mean one last drink?" the Doctor asks as if John knows.

"What h-have you," Halpen trembles even more than before.

"What is that last drink?" John asks Ood Sigma.

"Ood graft in a biological compound," answers Ood Sigma.

"Ooh dear," the Doctor begins to smirk. "You're a clever little Ood, aren't you?"

"What does that mean?" John looks between the Ood and the Doctor.

"The subconscious is always fighting. It came out in the red eyes as revenge, in the fighting Oods' anger, and then there was patience." The Doctor looks fondly from Ood Sigma to the manic Halpen. "Mercy and intelligence, all poured into Ood Sigma, at the height of it all."

"What have you done?" the quivering man shakes.

"An Ood graft in biological compound," the Doctor says under her breath.

"Ood graft," John repeats, "like a skin graft?"

"In not so many words," the Doctor tilts her head as Halpen's scalp literally peels back to reveal pale, rubbery head. His mouth spurts raw, fleshy looking tentacles. The skin of a human all but melts off of him. "He can hear it now, forever, that song of eternal pain. He's an Ood."

As fond of the Ood as John has grown through the course of the day, he still wants to puke at the sight. "They turned him into an Ood?"

"He is Ood-kind, now, and we will take care of him," Sigma answers John.

"Can't clearly tell what's right and what's wrong around you anymore," he murmurs, partly to the Doctor and mostly to the emptiness in his chest.

"It's better that way," she tries to soothe his fear. She looks from Ood-Halpen to Ood-Sigma, "would you allow him the honor?"

"It is yours, sir," Sigma bows to John.

"Me?" he points to himself, but the Doctor only nods at him. He takes himself over to a large button, greatly unsure of himself. As he looks at the Doctor again he presses the button. As electricity stops surging the Doctor looks upwards, and a familiar gold glow comes from her eyes. Something telepathic, John reasons. "The circle is broken."

"The Ood can sing!" the Doctor declares.

Music floods the air, travelling within every particle. The Ood raise their hands to celebrate the freedom of their people. It extends, as their minds find the other linked minds of their kind. That song of liberation flows through three galaxies, travelling like leaves on the wind.

"Doctor John, the Ood thank you," Sigma turns to him.

"Oh, I didn't do much," John pulls at his right earlobe shyly.

"Come then, John, have some graciousness," the Doctor nudges him gently before taking his arm like she did before.

"Will you stay, friends of Ood?" asks Sigma.

"I'm afraid we must be going," the Doctor answers in a subdued voice. She hasn't forgotten John's request to go home. As much as she would like to stall to avoid it, it's not her choice to make.

"Allow me to escort you," Sigma bows to them.

John and the Doctor walk arm in arm, smiling as they emerge. The sky is the kind of bright that promises good fortune. Around them, the Ood stand in circles, singing of peace and tranquility. It's a much shorter walk back to the TARDIS than either expected. When they arrive there is a welcoming party of Ood already there.

"Will you join in our song?" the Ood ask.

"I've, uh," the Doctor glances at John with a smile, "kind of got a song of my own, thanks."

"Your song must end," says Sigma.

"Why?" John asks for the Doctor.

"Every song must end," Sigma supplies like it really is that simple.

"Right, I think we'll be off then," John steps in, always the first to end an awkward moment with an awkward declaration.

"Take this song with you," Sigma and the other Ood raise their hands.

"We will," John nods to his friend, the Ood-kind.

"Always," the Doctor smiles.

"And know this, Doctor John; you will never forget, or be forgotten. Our children and our children's children will sing of the Doctor, John, and the wind and the ice and the snow will carry your names forever."

John and the Doctor turn back to the TARDIS simultaneously. They bid goodbye with a wave before entering. It's tense when they do. John places his coat over the railing while the Doctor goes over to the controls.

"Do you still want to go home?"

John looks up at her. He lets the silence loom like a shadow as he walks up the steps in a purposefully slow manner. Thinking of his answer he pauses. "You said you still feel the joy, the fear, the amazement, even after days like today?"

The Doctor seems to understand the question and the statement tied together. "It's because of days like today that I do."

John smiles, feeling entirely satisfied. "I definitely don't want to go home."

"Off we go, then," the Doctor flicks the controls and the familiar wavering starts around them. She looks at John expectantly. "Aren't you going to say it?"

John nods, surprised and pleased that she has already come to expect it from him every time they go onward. Okay, he's more pleased than surprised: "Allons-y."

"Allons-y," the Doctor repeats, "friend of Ood."


	5. The Sontaran Stratagem

"I can't believe I'm doing this," John near giggles.

"Neither can I," the Doctor murmurs under her breath. Never in all her years of travelling has she ever let anyone fly her TARDIS. '_What was I thinking?_'

_You were thinking that he is cute when he pouts._

The Doctor flushes very near indignantly at her TARDIS's accusatory tone. She can't help but feel a little caught. '_Oh, come on, you heard how he was dogging me! He never would have let up if I hadn't given him a little lesson._'

_You use the word 'dog', which is funny, given that you use the term 'puppy' to describe his eyes and pouts, my Doctor._

_'Since when do you have such an attitude?_' the Doctor demands flippantly.

_I have picked up your habits, my dear, including the habit of finding John's hands rather warm and_—

"Watch it!" the Doctor verbally responds to her sassy little blue box. Her hand goes to pull up a lever John has missed, saving her the need for a cover story.

"Ooh, sorry there, old girl, hope I didn't dent you," John pats the console and receives a sound he chooses to perceive as affection.

'_You are really pushing it today, Missy,_' the Doctor growls in her head.

_You needn't envy, my darling; I can read his thoughts, and they are entirely of you._

'_Really?_' the Doctor thinks but never gets an answer. A shrill ringing cuts off her stream of consciousness.

"Wha—is that…since when do you have a mobile?!" John blusters from his controls. It would be so much easier to get a hold of her if he knew she had a number! '_I could have just said_ _"hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's my number, so…" no, no, no, that's that song._'

"It's not mine," the Doctor responds in a weighed down tone. She seems to take an awful lot of deliberation time before answering it. Even when she does flip it open there's a good couple seconds before she collects herself: "hello?"

"Hello, Doctor; it's Shaun. You're needed, back on Earth."

John stares. Shaun, as in Shaun Temple, the Doctor's second companion? Why is he calling her? Why is his mobile in the TARDIS? Why does the Doctor have it? Why does the Doctor use it? Why is he calling her?!

"You heard him, Johnny-Boy," the Doctor turns, smiling again. "To Earth!"

"Um," John shifts nervously, "what if I dent it?"

The Doctor smiles at him, "you're not going to dent the Earth, but if you'd like to just watch, that's fine."

John moves behind the Doctor shyly as she takes over again. The old girl hums differently under the delicate fingers of her owner. He still watches closely, so that his next lesson might go fairly smoothly. It is comforting that the TARDIS still jerks, even with the Doctor piloting. In fact, he thinks she might have shaken less when he was at the wheel…well, levers and buttons.

As if to prove him wrong the TARDIS jerks herself to the right, sending her Doctor and John flying. They grasp each other's arms for stability, but are still thrown into a collision. John flushes beet red, feeling his entire front pressed against the Doctor, both of his hands, at an attempt to stabilize them, on either side of her hips. He can't see her face but he's guessing she isn't too happy with him, the way she has tensed up. Slowly - frighteningly slowly - her hand removes itself from under his and hits a lever that corrects their angle. John removes himself from her at an equally cautious pace.

They don't talk about it.

When the TARDIS materializes on Earth the Doctor heads for the door immediately. They've landed in some kind of alley way, with autumn leaves fallen to the ground despite there still being green on the trees. John hangs back, approaching the entrance tentatively.

"Doctor," Shaun greets with a smile.

The Doctor smiles back, but it has a kind of tightness to it. Shaun looks well, she notes. He was always a looker but now he seems…rejuvenated. '_Time away from me has done him some good,_' she laments. The smile becomes more natural as she greets him, "Shaun Temple."

John steps out as they're in the middle of hugging, probably for the first time since they parted ways, he imagines. It's an unusual hug. It's tighter than a friendly hug, but looser than a lover's hug, and just short of the tension that his friends had when they hugged their exes for the first time since divorce (or separation or discovery of affairs or whatever). He catches Shaun's eye timidly.

Shaun Temple looks grief stricken, for only a split second. Now, that is the kind of jealous, woeful, wistful expression of a person seeing their ex with someone new for the first time. However, when John takes a half a step the expression is gone, and slowly fades into a friendly, teasing one. "Should'a known; didn't take you long to replace me."

"Oi, don't start," the Doctor chides him, but with none of her usual defensiveness. "Shaun, this is John Smith; John, this is Shaun Temple."

John approaches the way a cat approaches a new toy. He walks on a kind of angle, with his wide, brown eyes twitching a bit nervously. He doesn't mean to come off as such but he's nervous. This Shaun did the Doctor some good in learning about humans, that's certain. If he helped her through heartbreak then John's all for him. Still, he can't shake the slight air of tension coming from Shaun, whom he is sure is also trying very hard to seem friendly. "Nice to meet you; she's told me all about you, really."

"I dread to think," Shaun raises an eyebrow at the Doctor with a tight smile.

"Oh, well, I mean, she mentioned you traveled with her, said you did her some good," John scratches the back of his neck.

"She told you I was pining after her, didn't she?" Shaun slides accusing eyes the Doctor's way and she quirks the corner of her lips downward in habit.

"Well, no one would blame you," John mutters before his eyes catch something, "and it seems it didn't take you long to get over it!"

"What's that now?" the Doctor glances at John for an answer.

"Engaged," he points simply, to which Shaun flashes the ring to her. "Who's the lucky girl?"

"That Veena, from the hospital," Shaun says while twirling the ring.

"Ooh, now there's lovely," the Doctor smiles and pats Shaun on the arm, "she was sweet, so long as she stays away from those friends of hers."

"Oh, but there's business," Shaun turns away and pulls out a walkie-talkie. "This is Agent Temple, Operation Blue Sky is go, go, go!"

John and the Doctor are bombarded with soldiers moving in. There's a fleet of them, a small army, jogging down the street like it's an average mission. John turns to the Doctor. "Is he a soldier now?"

The Doctor only shrugs her lack of excuse as factory workers are dragged about and arrested. Shaun runs ahead and the two follow at a walking pace, finding a large, armored truck. Shaun leads them in, mentioning some anticipation on their front.

"Colonel Mace, this is the Doctor," Shaun introduces her to a tallish man, with thinning hair and sharp features. The Doctor remains casual, hands in her coat pockets and looking him over with an unimpressed expression.

"It's an honor, Ma'am," the colonel salutes sharply.

"At ease, Colonel Mustard, I'm not in the mood," the Doctor drawls lowly.

"You are technically still on file as employed, Ma'am," the colonel points out, apparently willing to forgo the insulting moniker, "you've been called in on investigating the presence of illegal aliens."

"Do you mean aliens like her or immigrants, because it looks like Guantanamo Bay out there! Arresting people in the streets at gunpoint, real noble of ye," John snarks with his arms tightly crossed. "I'm John, by the way, John Smith. Any chance of gettin' a salute, Monsieur Pompadour?"

"I can see why she likes you," Shaun smirks at John, finding his wit and name calling as an easy match for the Doctor's and all the more entertaining for it.

The colonel turns to the Doctor in askance but she sends him a look to indicate that she is neither the maker of that decision nor will she be responsible for John if he doesn't. In the end he turns to John and makes a loud announcement of "sir!"

"Thank you," John nods, feeling greatly satisfied.

"Yesterday," Shaun indicates to the screen, strictly business as ever. "There were 52 deaths under identical circumstances."

"Right across the world, in 11 different time zones," adds the colonel.

As different points light up on the monitor, indicating the locations John speaks up, "they all happened simultaneously."

"Exactly, all at the same moment, all in their cars," says Shaun, possibly a little impressed with John's number ability.

"They were all poisoned, with no traces in any biopsies. The cars have nothing in common except that they have Atmos."

"What's Atmos?" asks the Doctor.

"Even I know about Atmos," John replies, "the thing you put in your car to reduce CO2 to zero. Everyone's got it — my Mum got free Sat Nav and 20 quid in shopping vouchers for introducing her friend."

"And this is where they make it, then?" the Doctor glances down to the factory floor. "Shipping world wide from here; and you think it's alien?"

"We're investigating that," Shaun speaks before the colonel can. He knows very well they won't be getting on very well. He takes the lead, bringing them to a room where the Doctor might be able to work better. The Atmos device is laid out on a table and the Doctor is already looking it over with those eagle eyes of hers. He has missed her eyes (no one on Earth's got eyes like that [but don't tell Veena]).

"Do you know how many cars are on Earth?" A stranger might think she was just asking it so she could answer her own question. Shaun pays attention, though, and he can see from the way she leans she's actually asking John.

"This year's stats said about eight hundred million, I think," John answers without even really registering that he was asked.

"So, if aliens want a device that can be threaded through eight hundred million death traps, I'm guessing it's not to shrink your carbon footprint," the Doctor postulates. She picks up the different components and reaches into her pocket. The glasses she pulls out are rectangular, sleek, feminine, but still quite smart looking.

"Since when do you have glasses?" John raises his brows; he's learning new things about the Doctor all over the place today!

"She still have those things?" Shaun asks as he pokes his head back inside. "You know she doesn't actually need them. Time Lady superiority, she calls it. It's just her wanting to look all marmy."

"It's not that I don't need them, or do need them, I just," the Doctor pauses for a moment, "like them."

"They do look good," John reasons to Shaun before looking at the Doctor again with a sly smile, "rather…attractive."

"Doctor, Agent Temple, I need you with me," the colonel unwittingly breaks the tense air of the room.

Shaun rushes like there's a fire and the Doctor takes her glasses off - unconsciously handing them to John - before dashing off as well. John figures he best take the time to do some digging of his own. He is reminded of Pompeii, and the good he was able to do then. Then there was the Adipose incident, and he did some good then too! Why, he's brilliant, he is!—John decides. The Doctor keeps telling him so he might as well start believing it.

John fiddles with the Doctor's glasses very carefully in hands. Never mind his habit of manhandling his flannel sleeves he's got a full on tactile obsession, he guesses. Aha!: he has found the personnel office! The files are thick like the bricks of the Great Wall of China! Not that he has been, but he hears it's, well, great.

"Hello, what's you?" John asks an empty folder, sitting among the rest. "Sick days, and not a page to be found. The Doctor should see you."

During the walk back, folder in one hand, glasses in the other, John muses. He wonders if he'll pick up the Doctor's little habits. He makes an effort not to fiddle with his hands as much because she tends to stare at them when he does, and he's not sure if that's good or bad. Meanwhile, she has habits of her own, that can be equally distracting. She does that thing with her lips—her naturally pouty lips, even though she complains that he pouts too much. She also ends sentences with "then" a lot. She folds her arms and puts her hands in her pockets a lot, but he does that too. Maybe it's an insecurity thing.

The Doctor and Shaun are talking, rather quietly, John hears. They seem to be sharing a moment, and while he doesn't want to interrupt them, this is important. "Oi, you lot…with your storm troopers and your Sonics; you're just rubbish at this."

"Where have you been?" the Doctor asks him with a smile rather than sneer at the jabbing. She also takes her glasses back from him and puts them on immediately.

"Personnel, where all the useful stuff is, when you're dealing with humans. Years as a temp and you can recognize what's weird and what's not in the office and this is weird: an empty file." John waves it at the Doctor, whose smile only grows as he continues. Out of his periphery the colonel is less impressed, and Shaun seems amused at best.

"Okay, so what's _not_ in the file?"

"Sick days," John declares proudly. He opens the brick thick folder and, true enough, there's nothing to be found. "Hundreds of people working here and not one of 'em is sick? No hangovers, head colds, crybabies, not even a shopping trip for the girls? No one has ever been sick; the workers don't get ill."

"That can't be," the colonel snatches the file just to verify that there is, in fact, **nothing in there!**

"You've been checking out the building, but you should have been checking out the work force." John cocks his head to the colonel.

"You are good," Shaun nods at the man freely.

"You're brilliant," the Doctor smiles at John proudly.

"So, colonel, the Atmos system was designed by Luke Rattigan, then?" John asks, purposefully trying out the Doctor's habit of ending sentences with that certain preposition. He quite likes it! "The Rattigan Academy is a center that handpicks geniuses, run by an overnight billionaire graduate with no record of a family? Kind of screams mad scientist to me."

"I wouldn't mind investigating that," the Doctor folds her glasses again and puts them back in her coat. "Come on, then!"

"Allons-y!" John hops to and gallops after her. He faintly hears Shaun ask before he's sent to investigate the work force. The smallest, most petty part of John is glad to have the Doctor back to himself.

"Oi, bring us a jeep, would you boys?" the Doctor barks out over the ramp. One snaps a salute, and she smiles, pleased. "Fresh air, geniuses, what else could you want?"

"Doctor, actually, I was thinking," John wonders if now is the time to try out that telepathy thing. Better not, he decides and gathers his nerves. "I think I should go home."

The Doctor feels time slow around her as she dissolves into her thoughts. She wasn't prepared for this. And this soon?—to just go home and leave her? There so much she wanted to show him. He would have loved the Fifteenth Broken Moon of the Medusa Cascade (she may or may not be thinking over if he should know that she does _have_ a name). Oh, and she wanted him to see the lightning skies of Cotter Palluni's world; the Diamond Coral Reefs of Kataa Flo Ko! Oh, but now he wants to go home, and she still wants to do so much with him. She wants to show him so much, and do so much, and most of all she wants to thank him. He has saved her life in so many ways, so many times, and, now…and… "Just poppin' in for a visit, then?

"Yeah, I think I should tell my Mum to get the Atmos out of her car, say hi to my Gramps, all that," John shrugs, oblivious to the Doctor's struggle.

"Right, well, might as well give you a lift," the Doctor smiles to cover up her flummox. "This is, uh, Ross?"

"Yes, Ma'am," the soldier salutes her.

"Okay, the salute kind of works with you," she smiles at him, and John can't tell if she's being flirty or cheeky. They pile into the jeep but are silent, despite the close proximity. Ross drives like a soldier, with his eyes straight forward. The Doctor is unusually quiet, which means she's really thinking hard on something. John knows it's best to let her think rather than try to chatter on. He doesn't mind the hand holding at all.

"Oh, this is my stop," he points out. The jeep slows and he jumps out, the same he has done since he was a kid. The Doctor slides over to his seat to bid him goodbye, hand on the door. "I can walk from here."

"I'll be back soon," the Doctor smiles.

"And be careful!" John shouts after them.

"Onwards, Ross," the Doctor declares just lightly enough to fall short of an order. She watches John disappear in the jeep mirror. Her smiles doesn't fade for blocks yet. "Ross, do you have a family?"

"Yes, Ma'am: a brother and sister, and a mum and dad," the soldier answers honestly.

The Doctor respects his honesty, just hopes it won't get him killed is all. "Good to know, thank you. Just…try to be careful, eh?"

Ross doesn't seem to know how to take this, but smiles in a very human way. "Yes, thank you, Ma'am, I think I will."

"Good," the Doctor ends things on that note. She leans on her hand, gazing out the window. She hates car rides — she misses her TARDIS. The Atmos in the jeep signals a turn and she rolls her eyes. '_Investigating something they can't even get rid of themselves until they know what it is. It's like strapping a bomb to yourself so you can learn how to diffuse it._'

"Oh, get off," Ross snaps at the device's alto feminine voice.

"Must be a pain," the Doctor comments, ready to break her silence.

"Drives me around the bend," Ross smirks as they take a turn around the actual bend.

"Ooh, you timed that perfectly," the Doctor smiles.

"Wasn't sure it was gonna work, to be honest," Ross smiles back.

"Well, mission accomplished," she mock salutes him as they pull up. The Rattigan Academy is just as she expected, all perfect lawns and big stone face. It reeks of pretension and loneliness. Just like the sad looking young man standing in front. He seems to be expecting them, and making a feasible effort to look intimidating. She knows this type, though. "Hello there, darlin', I'm the Doctor, this is Ross."

"Hello, sir," Ross nods by the Doctor's side.

"Show us around, would you, love?" the Doctor asks rhetorically, already making her way inside and around. She notes all the devices silently, marking them in her head. They're decades ahead of their time, she could give them that, but it's not alien, at least not yet.

"Your commanding officer called," says the young man with the ill shaven face.

"I haven't got a commanding officer, don't work for them," the Doctor replies. His wording, she catches, and notes that she might not have a CO but he certainly does. "This technology, all focused on space travel. Looking to move to an alien planet or something?"

"If only that was possible."

The Doctor looks at the boy - Luke, she thinks she remembers John saying - to emphasize her point. "If only that were possible: conditional clause."

Luke takes on a manic look that doesn't phase the Doctor. "Come with me. You're smarter than the usual UNIT grunt, I'll give you that."

"Don't call Ross a grunt, he's a lovely young man, Ross is. And you be nice, I have a feeling you have issues with that," the Doctor points a lazy finger at him in passing, still looking around. Ross looks mildly alarmed at her treatment of the for all intents and purposes scary young man. The Doctor, however, is giving her attention to the teleport pod in the room. The keypad is oddly structured. It's not designed for a human hand, and the technology…ooh, dear, it's SONTARAN! Oh, that's why this boy could design Atmos: he's working with the Sontarans. She feels sad for the misplaced little human. "You're eighteen, and instead of going out with friends you design a system for CO2 dissolution. It might not be so great, though, since cleaner air means more driving, which needs more petrol, so this might do some real damage. You don't look like you care, though, because it's been a long time since you really cared about something, hasn't it? Yes, and that's—"

"Look, I don't know what you're getting at, but your assumptions are only making you look foolish!" Luke begins shouting but the Doctor bends to stare him down.

"Because it has been a long time since anyone cared about you, hasn't it?" The Doctor measures Luke very carefully as she straightens to her full height. He tries to be so much larger than everything around him but he's still a child, as she looks upon him now. "You like being clever, because it's the only thing you have. It's what was there when no one else was, when nothing else made you feel anything but ordinary. You like being clever but clever is lonely, isn't it?"

Luke regards the Doctor in a very defensive way. His shoulders are drawn into himself, to shield his ego from her. She sees too much; thinks too much. She knows too much, with those piercing blue eyes of hers. She looks at him like she can see the entirety of his life splayed out in front of her like a map. "Yeah, I'm on my own, so what?"

"You remind me of someone," the Doctor begins. She's taking a gamble, recounting this story, but it's one she's willing to take. "I knew this boy…a long time ago. He was brilliant, he really was, but he was so afraid of not being the most brilliant. He was terrified that if you took that away he'd just be ordinary, or worse: nothing. So, he tried so hard to be the most clever, and do the best in school, but it never made him feel better. He just got lonelier and lonelier."

"What's your point?" Luke snaps at her harshly but she continues.

"So, one day his sister tells me that he's alone, studying, again. He was always alone, working on something or another. That's what happens when parents aren't around to do their jobs." The Doctor gives pause, hoping it to bridge some gaps. "The boy's father was no help, that's for certain. No, that boy just kept to himself, hoping to prove to himself and the whole wide universe that he could do something worthwhile with himself. He was brilliant, though, he was so brilliant, he just…never believed it."

"What happened?" Luke asks but then shrinks, as if embarrassed to show emotional attachment to the story. "I mean, what happened to the boy?"

"I don't know," the Doctor shrugs, facing away from Luke and Ross, "that's the end of the story."

"This is ridiculous," Luke goes back to being a defensive little twat. Arrogance as his armor and words as his sword he stabs at the Doctor. "That story was so obviously about your own son!"

"I don't have a son, Luke," the Doctor looks directly into his eyes and he physically recoils. "That's how the story ends."

—

"I said so, didn't I, about the aliens?" Wilf chatters at his grandson. "The Doctor, you're safe with her, yeah? I mean, I'm sure you're both responsible, but young love can fry the common senses a bit."

"Oi, Granddad," John scolds his old grandfather, both scandalized and impressed. He softens a bit, thinking on what to say. Wilf knows very well how long he has searched for her, better than anyone. "She's amazing, Gramps. She's just…dazzling! Don't ever tell her I said that, but I trust her with my life."

"I thought that was my job?" Wilf jabs at his best lad.

"You still come first," John assures him, "but I'm so glad I found her, Gramps."

"Don't tell your mother," Wilf leans into John. "I mean it, Lad. I know you'll want to tell her, you're a good boy, but best leave this one to be Chinese whispers."

"Tell who what?" Sylvia stomps her way in as if on cue. "And where have you been, young man? Just up and disappeared, with nothin' but a word to dad that you had found a freelance job!"

"It's nothing, Mum, just," John looks at the untouched mug of coffee in his hands - he has really taken to tea since travelling with the Doctor - and sighs. "I just…I'm all right, you know."

Sylvia seems to at least soften at this. As great a job as she has done making John feel like a cookie-cutter of a man she still manages to love her little boy (in exceedingly rare moments). "Well then start cutting those coupons!"

"Doorbell!" John heralds and springs to get it with his finger still in the air. He doesn't realize Sylvia and Wilf's alarm, seeing as how the doorbell hasn't actually rung yet.

"You wouldn't believe - you wouldn't bl'AVE - the day I'm havin',' the Doctor rolls her eyes on the larger part of the sentence. John feels like she's mocking someone but leaves it alone. He follows her out to the drive without question. She has sent Ross to find a car without Atmos, she told him. That's the most she has said, really, which worries John. She taps around the car a bit before lifting the bonnet, "call Shaun."

John takes the mobile she hands him with minimal fumbling and obeys.

"Is that her? Is it?—is that the Doctor?"

The Doctor and Wilf meet eyes and there seems to be an alarmed sort of recognition going on. "It's you!"

"You two know each other?!" John asks, flabbergasted.

"You disappeared!" Wilf babbles at the Doctor. "Name's Wilf, Wilfred Mott, Ma'am! You're an alien, eh?"

"Well, I'd not go shoutin' it about but it's lovely to meet you properly, Wilf!" The Doctor, forgoing a handshake, simply hugs the man like he were her own grandfather. "You darling button of a man, I didn't know you were John's grandfather!"

"Shaun, hold on, here's the Doctor!"

She takes the phone and speaks rapidly: "Shaun, tell the colonel it's code red Sontarans, they're in the file, and don't send anyone in, UNIT will get massacred, am I clear?"

"Got it: code red Sontarans," Shaun's flat voice answers and hangs up.

The Doctor pushes how odd he sounds into her mind for later before taking out the Sonic. She sets it for Sontaran technology, an out of place pocket of the future tucked into the present.

"Thing is, Doctor, Johnny here is my only grandchild, and I just want to make sure he's taken care of," Wilf speaks up, blatantly ignoring John's embarrassed whining.

"Oh, he takes care of me," the Doctor smiles diplomatically.

"Whatta good lad! That being said, John," Wilf addresses him sharply and out of the blue, "the Doctor here is an extraordinary young lady and you best be a proper gentleman to her!"

"Oohoo, you are my favorite, Wilfred Mott," the Doctor chortles in absolute delight, especially when John only becomes more flustered. A *shing* noise catches her attention and she finds the spikey grey box alive with temporal energy. "There we are! It's a temporal pocket, only a second out of sync with real time. It's hiding something in there… "

"Something wrong with the car?" Sylvia walks up only to back off as she recognizes the blazing ginger hair that pops up. "It's you!"

"You know her too?" Wilf points at the absolute wildness of it all.

"It's the woman from the wedding, before poor Nerys went off," Sylvia bellows.

"Poor Nerys?—she gave up a good man in your son to prattle like a twit and you're thinking of her?" The Doctor only gives partial looks over her shoulder, never meeting Sylvia's eyes. Honestly, the human woman scares her a bit, and she'd rather not incur all her wrath at once. "Get back!"

John reaches to pull the Doctor back as gas fumes from the bonnet. "Doctor, what is that?"

"It's some kind of artificial gas," she can taste it.

"Doctor, what if it's poisonous?" John asks, looking the Doctor in the eyes with his hands on her shoulders. "If they've got poisonous gas in every car on Earth…?"

"They've created eight hundred million weapons," she whispers in horrified affirmation.

"I'm gonna get it off the street," Wilf mutters as he gets in.

"No!" the Doctor jumps from John and starts Sonics every bit of the car. "They've isolated it, it won't open!

Everywhere, car alarms are blaring and gas is leaking from each and every one of them. The air is clouded and it's enough to split someone's head open.

"It's the whole world!"


	6. The Poison Sky

**"It's the whole world."**

"Doctor!" John's shout pulls her back into the deadly present. He pulls desperately at the car door handle. Wilf bangs on the window from the inside but the gas is taking its toll, and no one has a good feeling as the man shows his taxed physicality.

The Doctor moves aside as Sylvia comes out wielding an axe of all things. The windshield shatters irreparably at the strike of the steel head. Behind the cracked glass Wilf takes his opportunity to breathe in actual air. "Get him out of there!"

John jumps to and clears the glass off the bonnet of the car. He helps Wilf out, sliding him down the blue metal. Once on the ground he can stand, with John's help, and the Doctor ushers them all inside. John turns to his mother. "Why do you have an axe?!"

"Burglars!" is the woman's tetchy response.

"Seal off the doors and windows and stay in the house," the Doctor waves at them as she sees Ross pull up in some dreadful looking thing.

"This is all I could find without Atmos, Ma'am," he shouts to her.

"John," is all she has to say, not asking if he's coming or not.

"John, no, stay with us! That Doctor is nothing but trouble," Sylvia begs of her son in distress.

"Don't listen to her, son," Wilf waves his daughter off bids his grandson away. "You go with the Doctor! That's my boy, John!"

John takes one final look at his family before jumping in with the Doctor and Ross. He sends Wilf a two fingered salute: a sign from his boyhood that he would do honorably. "They're gonna be all right, yeah?"

"If they stay in the house, they should be," the Doctor says sidelong. She sounds dismissive but John sees in her eyes that she cares as much as he does. It comforts him.

"We're here," Ross responds soon enough, breaking them from their intense eye contact. How long was that ride exactly?

John jumps out of the old car but instantly chokes on the air. He tries to catch his breath without dry heaving. "This is disgusting."

"John, you should go to the TARDIS," the Doctor says to him quietly. She pulls out the key she had been planning to give him after his flying lesson. "Here: it's your own key to the TARDIS to keep."

"Wow," John coughs a little but stares at the plain metal key. It feels warm, but maybe it's just him being a sop. "Kind of a big moment, huh?"

"Yeah, but maybe get sentimental about it after we've saved the world from choking to death?" The Doctor nods before sending him on his way. "I've got to go stop a war, you stay in the old girl until I find it safe!"

"This is only time I'm going to obey that order, I hope you know that!" John shouts and waves. He jogs to the TARDIS, letting himself in with great pride. The air clears around him and he pats the wall in thanks. It vibrates under his touch in return. "What has she got planned?"

The TARDIS doesn't answer the question but jerks under John's feet. The sentient police box senses the change. She softens her lighting to get John's attention. It works.

"What is it? What's happening sweetheart?" John asks the TARDIS, hands on the controls.

_We have been moved onto the Sontaran ship. _

_'Oh, that's new,_' John thinks.

_You'll get used to it. Listen to me, John Smith: the Doctor is going to contact them. They will use me as a hostage but she will know you are here. Do not worry, she will find a way to save you._

"Of course she will," John says aloud. "I can talk to you like this, right, I mean, that's cool with you?"

_Yes, it is very cool with me._

John smiles at the old girl's dry tone. She must take after her owner, he thinks.

_If anything my Doctor takes after me, John Smith. Per relationship who do you think is the mother?_

John sweats a little at the agitated tone of the voice in his head. He thinks on the answer long and hard. "The…mother…ship?"

_Correct; good save, human boy._

"This is the Doctor."

John blinks intensely as the screen flickers a bit. For a second he thinks he can see a flash of a man's face but it's gone. The Doctor's face comes up, along with the colonel's (the latter of which John is less thrilled to see). "Doctor, are you there?"

"Tell me, Staal," the Doctor begins after deftly shoving the colonel's face out of screen with her hand. Some complaining is heard but she zeroes in on the monitor, speaking directly with the Sontaran General. "When did you become such a coward?"

"How dare a woman speak to the great Sontaran Empire in such a way!"

"Please, poison gas is a coward's weapon and you know it. A lot like you, hellbent on honor and valiant battle, there must be something else up those little potato domes of yours." The Doctor leans back just a little, so the angle on her face is changed and she takes on a tigress kind of expression. "Losing the war against the Rutans, I bet. You fun-meal-toys have been battling for fifty thousand years! Why, so you can get some glory under your pudgy little star trek fingers and do your little dancy chants?"

"You will not be so quick to ridicule when you see our prize!" The viewpoint moves on the Doctor's end and she sees her TARDIS. "We are the first Sontarans to capture a TARDIS!"

The Doctor is diligent in schooling her features, to the point where neither the enemy nor the colonel can detect a change in expression. John can, though. If he looks really closely he sees the slight tension in the Doctor's rusty brows. It's a microexpression but it's there.

"As far as prizes go it's all right, but I lost my key to it, so I'll need a Smith. Maybe he can Johnny it open—oh, no, the expression is jimmy, innit? Either way, you won't be able to get in there."

"She's talking to me!" John declares to himself and the TARDIS. He runs his fingers through his hair. "She's talking to me and I can't answer! Grr, didn't she think that would be a problem?!"

_Patience, John, listen to what she's saying._

John obeys the TARDIS's word and calms himself.

"Of course, I'll have to phone him," the Doctor makes an audaciously fake show of patting her pockets down, "but I left it in there. Darn, well, at least I've got a remote."

"Cease transmission!"

John gawps as the screen goes black. He waits several seconds but it remains a blank slate. "Is that it? What does she want me to do? Am I supposed to call her? No, she said she'd call me, right? What do I do, though? Do I just sit and wait? She said they couldn't get in here, right? So, I just wait here?!"

Silence looms over him, like a dark cloud.

"I..I'm sorry, I am sorry I shouted, but please help me," John pleads with the TARDIS. "I wasn't trying to yell at you but…I'm scared, sweetheart, and I need to know how to help the Doctor."

_There is nothing to forgive, John, but you must listen. The Doctor is gong to help. She and I have a connection and she knows that we could hear her. She will find a way to help but you must wait._

"That doesn't seem fair," John chokes out. For once he has the opportunity to help, actually make a difference, and he's stuck as a hostage! What is she going to do? Not that she needs his help by any stretch but he might dare say she needs _him_. Who else is going to pull her away when she's too stubborn to back down. What about when she goes all self-sacrificing, who's going to talk her into finding another way?

_John, you care for the Doctor as much as I, but you don't yet know her like I do. Trust in me, and her, and be patient._

With an audible sigh/groan of defeat he throws himself onto the stairs. He looks at the mobile in his hand. The Doctor will call, he reminds himself. In the meantime, he might as well take care of something.

"Mum, are you all right?"

"John, darling, where are you?" Sylvia asks sweetly into the phone. "What's happening? All that talk about ozone and global warming, I thought it was rubbish. Now your Granddad's sealing us into our own home, oh, I wish you were here."

"Come on, Sylvia, it won't help," Wilf takes the phone even though the strain in her voice adds to the choke on his. "John, where are you?"

"I'm, uh," John looks around how he should describe it, "it's hard to say. I'm not with the Doctor-"

"You promised she was going to - she said she would - look after you," Wilf manages to vocalize a frown.

"She will, Gramps, you know that," John answers quick as instinct. "She's taking care of things."

"It's just so…it's the scale of, John. I mean, how can one woman save the whole world?"

John smiles through his slight tearing up. "If anyone can, Gramps, she can…and she will."

"Well, if not, tell her she'll answer to me."

John swallows thickly and hangs up after a click is heard. He sits, feeling heavy. His bones ache with the kind of cold that sneaks into you after you've expended everything you have. This must be what they mean by "dead tired". He kicks his trainers a bit childishly. "What do I do now?"

_Wait for her, John. You have done so, haven't you? _

"Yeah," John muses in easy discussion with the sentient one.

_You waited and searched for her, through the rift in time. How long was it for you, John? How long did you wait for her?_

"A year…I waited a year to find her," John runs another hand through his hair (great hair, it is, and thank goodness it's healthy and thick or he'd have none of it left). "Sometimes it felt like only minutes, other times it was like an eternity. In my reality, a year passed without the Doctor."

_Was it painful for you? _

John swallows another bout of emotion and hopes his voice is even. His throat is suddenly dry and he feels colder than before. He doesn't like having to relive the year that wasn't. "Yes, it was."

_Then trust that she will find you. It might not have been a year, but my Doctor was as desperate to find you as you were for her. _

"Really?" John asks with his interest piqued. If he were a dog his ears would stand up straight, while his tail was wagging.

_I see why she thinks you have puppy dog eyes…_

"What?" John's question is an octave or two higher than normal.

_Don't tell her I told you that. She doesn't even know we talk, you and I._

"Our little secret, then?" John smirks and winks up to the ceiling. A ringing cuts through the silence and scares him half to death. He jumps, staring at the mobile in his hand as if it takes him a couple seconds to realize what's happening. "Doctor, what's happened? Where are you?"

"Still on Earth, but don't worry, I have my secret weapon."

"What's that?" asks John.

"You," the voice takes on a slightly cheeky but overall fond note.

"Um, I don't know how that's gonna work out, and don't you have a remote?" John scratches the back of his neck as he moves over to the controls. So far there's no activity.

"Yeah, I don't have a remote. I really should uplink the Sonic's elctromagneticizer to the TARDIS's but that's why I need you on that ship. That's why I had them move the TARDIS. I'm sorry, but you have to go outside."

"But aren't there Sontarans out there?" John watches the door dubiously.

"They'll be at particular battle stations, I mean they don't exactly have union coffee breaks up there. I'll talk you through it."

John pauses a moment. "What if they find me?"

The silence on the Doctor's end is possibly even less promising. He can hear the struggle in her, the gears turning her mind. "I know, and you know I wouldn't ask, but there's nothing else I can do."

It's true, she wouldn't ask him to do a damn thing if she could help it. "What do you need me to do?"

"The Sontarans are inside the factory here, which means they have a teleport linked to the ship you're on. It's deadlocked, though, so you have to reopen the link."

"I might know how a circuit board works but that doesn't mean I can use alien technology—when I was four I got my hand stuck in a toaster!"

"John, don't be so deprecating, you're brilliant! I know you can do this. A Sontaran has a weak spot on the back of the neck where a Provic Vent is. One hit knocks them out cold."

John thinks for a second, on his earlier question. What if they find him? "They'll kill me, won't they."

He can imagine the Doctor's face now, all clenched in pain and anxiety. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry - I'm so sorry - but you have to try. The whole world is choking to death, John, and you're the only one who can save it."

It's all the motivation John needs. He pats the old girl for good luck and picks up the wrench the Doctor sometimes uses for repairs (hitting the old girl when she tilts too much). Peeking out the door he can see the Sontaran standing right outside. They're wee things, aren't they?

Wham!—one blow and the guard falls to the ground. John lifts the mobile to his ear with a grin not entirely appropriate for the amount of peril he's in. In a whisper: "back of the neck!"

"Oh, you're good. Now, find the internal junction feed to the teleport."

"There's a door," John offers, in case that helps any.

"Okay, it must be through there. There should be an access panel."

"It's Sontaran shaped, for three really fat fingers," says John.

"You'll probably need all of your fingers to fit, but it should still work."

John, figuring in for a half/in for a whole, bends to the switch. He carefully fits his hand to the mold. The door swishes open and he continues. "Live long and prosper; I'm in."

"Ooh, you're brilliant, you are," the Doctor praises, by the sounds of it, through pursed lips.

Not that he doesn't love the praise from her, but John presses for her to continue. "Okay, okay, now what?"

"Find a circular panel with a "T" with a line through it—gotta go!"

John could murder her, suddenly alone on a murderous alien race's spaceship. He leaves the phone on as he continues. As a door slides open John shrinks into a corner. These things are ruthless, the Doctor said. They seem to be, too, despite their Mister-Potato-Head appearance. He waits for the troops to go through. After another door closes he counts to ten and lets out a quiet breath. After checking about he continues on.

"John, hold on, I'm coming for you, I swear."

He appreciates the assurance, even though he hasn't doubted it for a moment. Finally he finds the panel but has no idea what to do with it… "Doctor, hurry up!"

"John!—okay, flip up all the blue switches inside like on a fuse box. That should get the teleport working."

John quirks his lips - the way she usually does - and figures it should work. He does so, slowly, so as not to set anything off.

"Clonefeed!—it's clonefeed…" the Doctor chatters on through the phone. The sentence continues beyond coherency as John hears it.

He hisses into the phone: "Doctoorrrrrrrrrrrr!"

"Now!"

John catches a glimpse of two Sontarans in his periphery before he blinks. The light swallows him up and the next millisecond he can see the Doctor, with the Sonic. He has never been so glad to see anyone in his whole life. "Sometimes I really hate you!"

The Doctor could beg to differ as she feels herself crushed into his embrace. His arms encircle her entirely, lips pressed to her forehead. She pats his back and struggles to make words audible against his chest. "Okay, John, yeah, but I've gotta get the TARDIS back."

John steps aside so she can Sonic the controls of the teleport. Shaun joins them inside, only nodding to John. Not that he expected otherwise, but he can tell that attempted friendly air has gone. "You've been busy without me, haven't you?"

"Oh, yes," the Doctor smiles at him briefly before teleporting them again. As John looks out the other way he sees not the factory but…an office? Also there's a kid…with a gun. "You…should put that away, she doesn't take too kindly to those."

"The Sontarans lied to me," the kid starts to babble.

"You are too young to be wavin' this thing around," the Doctor brusquely grabs the gun out of Luke's hand and tosses it across the room like a toy.

John and Shaun walk around the boy without so much as a glance. John shoves his hands into his pockets before breaching the touchy subject. "So, you fancied the Doctor, eh?"

Shaun figured it was only a matter of time before the younger man got too curious to resist. Not that Shaun can claim he's innocent either. First opportunity alone with the Doctor he asked everything he could

_"So," Shaun began gingerly. "This John Smith; he seems nice." _

_"He is nice, very nice," the Doctor answered him with an already testy tone. She had been anticipating this conversation for quite a while. _

_"He seems quite fond of you already," was the best Shaun could come up with. It wasn't that he was still in love with the Doctor (entirely), or that he was a jealous man (horribly), or even that he just didn't like John (completely). He just…wanted to know…why?_

_"We get along well," the Doctor answered, still short about it. _

_"Oh, don't pull that with me," Shaun gave up, exasperated. "He clearly fancies you and believe me, I watched you enough to know the signs of you fancyin' him."_

_"Oh, so we're back to how emotionally stunted I am?" the Doctor snarled at him. _

_"Don't give me that," Shaun retorted easily. "I see the way you look at him and I can tell. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, and I'm happy for you, really. I just want to know…why?" _

_"Why what?" the Doctor put down the Sonic and looked at him squarely._

_"Why him?—and why do you care about him so much?" Shaun watched an evolution of emotion in her. There was recognition, and pensiveness, then came reminiscence, fondness, trepidation, and a touch of fear. He sighed to himself; these were all the signs of love. _

_"I don't know, Shaun," the Doctor addressed him, finally feeling as if she could talk with him as an old friend. "I didn't even plan to travel with him, but I'm glad that I am." _

_"He has grown on you, it's easy to tell," Shaun smiled fondly. His tone softened when hers did, making the atmosphere of the room lighter. _

_"He's brilliant," she smiled just before John came back from investigating personnel. _

"Well, you said yourself, no one would blame me," Shaun shrugs at John, who nods his concurrence. "It was complicated, though. I mean she wanted to be friends, I wanted more, it worked out for the best, though. I mean we were married briefly-"

"What?!" John yelps like a cat that has had its tail stepped on.

"Chameleon arc, fob watch, human physiology, memory loss, long story, I'll tell you later," the Doctor waves her hand about nervously, visually cringing at the thought. "Luke, where's the atmospheric converter?"

The sad looking boy points pitifully to the lab. It's in parts but the Doctor begins throwing them together as if they're a child's Lego model. She babbles on, mostly out of pure need to do so. Shaun catches some words and John is at least able to follow the speed of her speech.

"Atmospheric converter?" John looks from the Doctor, who is just about finished, to Luke.

"It was going to be a new world," Luke spouts as if it will excuse things.

"Luke, you can't run away from your problems," the Doctor takes a second among all the chaos to speak softly. She places a hand on his shoulder and looks into his eyes. "The only way to solve a problem is to face it head on. You'll figure it out; you're brilliant like that."

"Doctor, are you doing what I think you're doing?" Shaun asks.

"Igniting the atmosphere!" she shouts as she runs ahead, only telling John through a nod to bring the atmospheric thingy. Outside the sky is grey, and you can barely see the city beyond the hills, let alone the skyline. London is covered in a blanket of grey smog. "Here we go!"

A laser shoots into the air and soon the entire atmosphere is in flame. Th smog over the whole world ignites as quickly as a match. The whole sky is fire, over the entire planet Earth. It roars with a frightening force. Yet, when it clears, the sky is blue again. It's a promising blue.

With only a gesture from the Doctor Shaun picks up the large device and rushes it back into the transporter room. She puts herself into the chamber and takes the heavy machine. With a thud she puts it on the floor and takes a good look at her companions. "Shaun, thank you, for all the times…every time. John, thank you…so much, for everything. Luke, sweetheart, you're going to be all right, you're a clever boy."

"Why are you saying goodbye?" John steps forward, shaking horribly.

"The Sontarans will be ready for war, and they will destroy the Earth if given the opportunity. I set this thing for Sontaran air," the Doctor pats the atmospheric converter.

"You're going to ignite their air," Shaun spells it out.

"You'll kill yourself," John cuts in harshly.

"Can't you just, I dunno, put it on a delay, send it up on its own?"

"I can't," the Doctor looks at Shaun then towards John. She knows he knows why, too.

"You have to give them a choice." John says for her. The next second she's gone, blinked out with light. He pulls at his hair madly. His throat makes a choking noise and tears burn his eyes. He didn't…he couldn't…there were….they could have…she promised!

"Easy there, mate, you knew she would try this," Shaun tries to comfort John through his own grief. He knew the Doctor for a year and it's the stranger who has known her for all of three(?) trips who's crying? Shaun scoffs in his head for lack of anything else to do but cry.

"I could have stopped her—should have stopped her." John hangs his head miserably.

"She told me a story," Luke finally speaks up, also in tears. "It was about a boy, and I thought it was her son, but she said she didn't have a son."

"She had a son," Shaun corrects him automatically.

"She said," Luke trails off but John speaks up.

"Did she say she _didn't_ have a son or that she _doesn't_ have a son?"

The realization hits Luke hard, and he seems to have the wind knocked out of him. In a blur he's at the teleporter, rewiring things, tears still flowing down his cheeks.

"What are you doing?" asks Shaun.

"Something clever," Luke answers before disappearing. As soon as he's gone the Doctor is back in his place. She seems to lose the strength in her knees as she wobbles out of the chamber. John catches her first, holding her tightly in his arms. He is breathing just as hard as she is, both trying to fight tears. He presses a kiss to her hair without realizing. Shaun comes to them, touching the Doctor's arm in slight disbelief.

"He took my place," the Doctor whispers. They all look out the window and all is well. "He ignited the atmosphere."

"He did something clever," John ghost's the boy's earlier words. The Doctor hangs her head, grief stricken at the boy's death. She had wanted to save him. Even though he very well facilitated the Sontaran invasion, she wanted to save him—show him he didn't have to be alone to be brilliant. John holds her as he feels tiny sobs wrack her body.

—

"Everything's well here, Lad," Wilf smiles at his grandson. The Doctor made sure to check on them but made herself scarce when Sylvia appeared at the end of the road. The axe incident really put a fright to her. "And I won't tell her."

John nods. He feels a little recovered after the whole ordeal, but he's still reeling from the monstrosity of it all. It ended as well as it could have, though, he guesses. "I…I'll be careful, Gramps. I'll be with the Doctor, after all."

"You go with that wonderful Doctor, Johnny, and you see the stars." Wilf chokes down his tears and pats his grandson's hand. "Then, then maybe bring a piece of 'em back for your old Gramps."

John chokes back his own tears as well. He pats his hand and smiles a watery smile. "Yeah…love you."

"John," the Doctor pokes her head in the door. She does a quick glance around for Sylvia. "Hello, Wilf; John, we best be off."

John smiles, a little tiredly, but happy all the same: "Allons-y."


	7. The Doctor's Daughter

The Doctor watches John worriedly. He trudges back into the TARDIS with heavy feet. He seems sad as he trails his fingers along the rail. He changed his trainers—probably for the best, considering how much they run on an average day. "You okay, John?"

"Yeah, he nods with an unsure smile. His hand in his jean pocket fingers the key there. He likes the feel of the metal, now warm from never leaving his grasp or his pocket.

"John," the Doctor approaches with a diplomacy about her. She rests her hands on his arms. Her eyes, looking up at him, are understanding, and ask questions without demanding answers. "Tell me if you want to go on. This life isn't easy, especially if you have a family back…home."

John looks back at the Doctor, knowing his eyes are as sad as he feels. He likes her comforting touch; it supplies a warmth he can't summon from his own heart at the moment. Chiswick isn't home, though, not anymore. Sure, there's Gramps, and he'll owe Mum a visit every now and then, but it isn't home. Home is where he flops onto his super bouncy bed the TARDIS gave him. He thinks of home as where he crashes through the doors with the Doctor after being chased off of yet another planet. "How could I go back to a normal life after all this? I want to continue on, like this - us - for…ever."

The Doctor seems spooked for a moment, flinching but never moving back. Her eyes take on a new expression, swirling with a new circulation of energy. She doesn't seem to realize as she whispers an echo of his word: "forever."

John falls to the rail, dragging the Doctor as he holds her in his arms. He looks to the ceiling; "what?!"

"What's going on?" The Doctor asks the TARDIS as well. Her familiar grinding sounds as she continues to spark and hiss at them. "What's wrong, sweetheart, where are you taking us?!"

"Doctor, what's happening?" John follows the Doctor back up to the controls, stumbling along the way. He manages to latch onto a bit of coral for dear life. "How can the TARDIS pilot herself?"

"I don't actually know what's going on," The Doctor admits as she pulls at a lever. It refuses to budge, though. She glances to where a murky jar of liquid rests on a little shelf. The liquid bubbles excitedly. "You seem to like it, don't you?"

"Who—what?" John looks from the Doctor to the jar, wondering just what's in there. With a final jerk the TARDIS stills, throwing John over the railing yet again as the Doctor lands on the jump seat.

"John, you all right?" she calls down to him. She leans over to look, flipping her hair in doing so.

"Oh, I'm…dandy," John remarks in a vaguely Scottish lilt as he puts himself right side up. He pulls at his plain blue shirt, making sure the sleeves are still rolled up to an acceptable level of casual-ness. "So, where are we?"

The Doctor reaches for his hand and leads them out. It's a dark, dank, rough looking place. They seem to be in a tunnel, where the only light is artificial. The ground is nothing but upturned soil, littered with rocks and roots. "Why would she bring as here?"

"Kind of exciting," John admits. The Doctor looks at him with fond wonderment, and he shrugs. "That feeling you get…like you swallowed a hamster."

The Doctor is about to ask when the hell he ever swallowed a hamster to have that frame of reference when there's a commotion. Two soldiers rush from another end of the tunnel, holding guns. They shout to drop their weapons, surrender, typical soldier jargon. "Oi, no weapons, G.I. Junior, we're safe!"

"Look at their hands, they're clean," the young one - Junior, suppose - says. "Process them; her first."

"Leave her alone!" John struggles against another soldier, and a third who appears to have popped up out of nowhere. "What are you doing to her?"

"It's taking a tissue sample," the Doctor narrates as the machine goes, squirming and yelping as whatever happens, happens. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow; not winnin' any awards for hospitality, eh, mate? What's this, then, some sort of extrapolator?—accelerator?"

The machine releases the Doctor's hand and John pushes through the guards. He takes the Doctor's hand, once smooth and white - save a smattering of freckles - now has a clear red mark. It looks like someone ripped the vein out of her hand.

A hiss draws their attention and out of a chamber steps a girl. She's young, but nearing adulthood, at least physically. She has blond hair, for some reason, and brown eyes, contrasting the Doctor's blue ones. As she emerges she seems confused, but sound of mind enough to accept the gun offered and load it.

"Doctor, who is that?" John asks the woman who looks just as startled as he is. "Where did she come from?"

"From me," the Doctor mutters. She looks from her scarred hand to the young woman freshly spawned. "She's, erm, well, my daughter, I guess you could say."

"Hello, Mother," the blond girl greets with only a dash of personality.

"Okay," John nods and shifts on his feet as if preparing to take a racing position. His lips purse for a moment before resuming questioning. "How?—you said she was your daughter, but how? I mean, they took a flesh sample and - what? - grew her?"

"It's progenation: reproduction from a single organism. Diploids become haploids become…her," the Doctor frowns deeply. She glances at the young girl before her before shots sound. Her hands take John with her and behind cover.

"Detonate!"

The Doctor guides John and the girl back behind some crates. The explosion is contained but seals off the tunnel, blocking the TARDIS. She looks to John - he's all right - then to the soldiers. Junior's fine, same as before, whole lot of good that does them. Then, there's the progenated one. "Why did you do that?"

"The Hath would have killed us," the blond responds.

"That's my ship, and my home, I need it," the Doctor barks back at her.

"It's just a box: collateral damage," the blond tries to reason again.

"She's a TARDIS, a sentient being, and it's our home, not collateral damage!" John also snaps at the female soldier. She certainly has the emotional capabilities of a piece of cardboard. At the very least she looks chastised at John's words.

"Look, you two don't make sense. Come on; we'll take you to General Cobb," Junior waves the gun at them. He only succeeds in getting an eye roll from the Doctor and John. Nevertheless they put their hands up and start walking.

John glances at the girl several times, trying to determine what to make of her. She seems so unlike the Doctor - a progenation, was it? - and yet he sees a lot of her in the girl. The blond hair is different, and her eyes are actually kind of like his own, in color. She walks like the Doctor, though, and he guesses she has all of her brilliance. "I'm John; what's your name?"

"Don't know, don't have one yet," the girl answers looking ahead.

"If you don't know your name what do you know?"

"How to fight."

"The machine probably embeds military history and tactics; just enough to keep a soldier going," the Doctor says with all the contempt a woman can muster in her voice. "She's a generated anomaly."

"Generated anomaly," John rolls on his tongue. The blond giggles at his silliness and he grins at her. "Generated…Jenny, how about that?"

"Jenny," the girl brightens like a child, "yeah, I like that: Jenny."

"How's that, then," John looks at the Doctor, who only seems annoyed with him, "Mum?"

"It'll do," the Doctor grinds her teeth in his direction. She doesn't know what to make of Je—the progenation anymore than John does. There's no way of knowing what of her genetic makeup went into the girl, only that any of it is buried under miles of a soldier's brain.

"Oh, come on, you never spent sleepovers in your girl years toying with baby names? My cousin Harry - that's Harriet - used to do it all the time at sleepovers. She'd pick some really dumb ones, though." John blathers on just for the sake of it.

"What, like Nerys?" the Doctor still sneers at the very thought of the name and the girl.

"Come on, you have to give her some credit," John phases out the joking atmosphere and lowers his voice. "She's your daughter, you said that, so isn't she?"

The Doctor sighs. She really could slap him in the face right now, she could. John is entirely in the right, and that only furthers her irritation. The girl is as much her as an actual child, more so, if you really think about it. Still, that doesn't mean she wants to mother a progenation for which she didn't even sign up. "Where are we, anyway?"

"Messaline," G.I. Junior responds, "or, what's left of it."

It's like pictures of the war camps Wilf used to show John when he had a school project. There are loose fires and crates upon crates of supplies. Tents are made from ripped cloth and the whole area has a kind of salvaged feel to it. An intercom reads off numbers, naming factors of the deceased and even some as extinct. It looks like hell.

"This is a theater, though, why would they build camp here?"

"Maybe they're method actors," the Doctor offers with flattened snark.

"It's like an entire town based down here," John looks around him. He'll address the Doctor on her lackluster later.

"General Cobb, I presume," she sourly greets an older man. He pays her little to no mind.

"If you are pacifists from the Eastern tunnels we'll have none of it here," he tells her blatantly. "We're committed to the fight."

"Right, well, I'm not really one for fighting, so that's not a problem. I'm the Doctor, by the way, this is John." The Doctor even looks entirely bored with it all; very unlike herself.

"And I'm Jenny," she offers with a smile.

"We're at war, there is no room for peacemaking," says Cobb.

"Yeah, you're a single minded lot, I get that, but you're fighting with, what was it, the Hath?"

Cobb starts walking off without a word. G.I. Junior and Jenny follow him, prompting John and the Doctor to follow as well (much to her chagrin). "Back at the Dawn of this planet, these ancient halls were carved from the earth. Our ancestors dreamt of a new beginning: a colony where human and Hath work and live together. But that dream died along with Hath promises; they wanted it for themselves, but the pioneers fought back. They first used the machines to produce soldiers instead of colonists."

John wanders away from them as General Cobb starts talking of war again. He has no desire to hear of suffering, and has something to look at anyway. On a wall there is a plaque, with dusty old numbers in it. It sits below a window, which is blocked off by dirt. "There's nothing outside but build everything underground?"

"The surface is too dangerous," says Junior.

"If that's the case then why build windows?" the Doctor asks the question John was thinking of.

"Yeah, and what about these?" John points to the numbers.

"The meanings were lost in time. This war has been going on longer than any of us can remember, generations, marked by the death toll."

"Do not talk to me of war," the Doctor sparks some of her old self back now. It's a dangerous spark, though, and the General backs away from it. Her eyes begin to glow a bit, dangerously gold with fury. "I know of war and if you knew of true unending suffering you would stop this."

"We only know how to fight," Jenny speaks up, capturing the Doctor's - her mother's - attention. She looks to John, who is also listening. "Every child of the machine has this knowledge, of only the fight, and the death."

"You're born to fight, only knowing how to die," the Doctor whispers. Her frightening flame wisps out as she turns to the girl. She bends a bit and looks the girl in the eyes. There is so much to be found in them, though. There's a locked away knowledge, she sees. She could teach this girl so much of how to be…an echo of a Time Lord, at the very least. She can't, though, because that would mean taking this girl for what she is: her daughter. That's a price the Doctor cannot afford to pay at the moment, so she turns away. "How do I get back to my ship?"

"It was in the western tunnels," Junior volunteers, while Cobb pulls up a virtual map begrudgingly. "There are more important things to worry about, though. The progenation machines are powered down for the night but come morning we could breed a whole platoon from you two."

"Breed what?" John squeaks a bit. The Doctor spares him a shadow of her usual bemused smirk and he tries to speak words. "I can't have a bunch of technical sons and daughters with a machine! I mean, no offense, but you're not, I mean, that is-"

"How am so technically different from a child birthed? I have a body, I have a mind, all spawned from her and then shaped by my own experience once separate, how is that different from your process of parenthood?" Jenny looks away from John, who she dares say looks impressed at her words, to her mother. That's what she's calling her, at least, her Mum. Her Mum, who looks both impressed at the fire in her and fed up with the attitude (which Jenny is quite certain comes _directly_ from her).

"Well, said, Soldier," Cobb nods to her, despite the Doctor's flared anger at him calling Jenny "Soldier". "We need more like you if we're ever to find the source."

"The source?" John echoes in askance.

"What's that, then? What is the source? Everyone likes a good source, come on?" the Doctor glances at Cobb expectantly. He glares back and it's almost comical watching the two try to interact without getting into a fist fight.

"It's the breath of life. In the beginning the Great one breathed life into the universe. Then, she looked at what she'd done, and she sighed." G.I. Junior recounts the myth of their beginnings.

"She…I like that," Jenny smiles at John in conspiracy. He smiles back; definitely her mother's daughter, this one.

"So, it's a myth," the Doctor rolls her eyes yet again - they're getting sore from overuse - and takes out her glasses. She directs the Sonic at the map and turns it. "There's encoded information, keeping you from accessing the data encryption, probably because you're so thick. Not you lot, but specifically him, I mean. Here we are, and your source is probably in this larger area where the tunnels diverge."

"That's the lost temple. That must be where the source is," Cobb smiles for the first time, possibly ever.

"Hold on, I didn't find this source for you to go and try to claim it in war!" the Doctor rips her glasses off and grabs Cobb's arm. "If there is any intention of bloodshed over this thing I will find it and destroy, do you understand me?"

"You'll have time to think over your decision from a prison cell." Cobb gestures for G.I. Junior to take arms.

"Oi, oi, oi, cool it, Rambo," John rambles at him, bringing Jenny and the Doctor away from the weapon's barrel.

"And if you try anything I'll see that your husband dies before your eyes."

"You're not gonna touch him," the Doctor challenges Cobb fearlessly. Her face is darkened as she threatens. "I'll stop you, Cobb, know that."

"I have an army," he retorts.

"We have a Time Lord," John spits back, only slightly grinning on the inside at being able to insert a reference to his favorite super heroes. No one else seems to get the reference, though (shame).

"I have the breath of God on my side," Cobb says with finality. "Put the new soldier with them. If she's from this one we can't trust her."

John says nothing as he takes Jenny with them using gently leading hands. He keeps quiet as they're led to the prison cell. He's just thankful they haven't separated him from the Doctor. It doesn't often happen, but when it does, it scares him more than any reason they could be in there for. Usually it's because they know humans aren't any threat (one time he was put in with a planet's livestock, he meant so little). Sometimes, though, some brutes will get a little handsy with the Doctor, and it makes John sick when she's lead out of his sight. She shouts that she'll find him and that they'll be all right but all he ever thinks is that he'll kill them if they touch her in any way. Every time an alien looks at her too long, or a guard touches her cheek like a creeper it drives John mad. Now, he can only be grateful that Cobb isn't the kind of soldier to take women captive.

"John," the Doctor nods to the number on the inside of the cell. She hasn't thought much of them, assuming they're a cataloging system for territory, but John might discover something else. He's brilliant like that. "That breath of life story might be a myth but the source could still be something real, chances are a weapon."

"And we basically gave Captain Nutjob a brochure on how to find it," John sighs and sits himself next to the Doctor's tired form.

"Yeah, but I remember the schematics. If we can get out of here we should be able to beat him to it before he can slaughter the Hath, whoever they are," the Doctor glances at her nails. when she looks up Jenny is wearing the same bemused look she claims as her own. "What are you starin' at, Missy?"

"You keep disdaining soldiers yet here you are drawing up plans like a proper General!"

"I am trying to stop the fighting," the Doctor corrects her, but she can already feel that emotion welling up inside her.

"Isn't every soldier?" Jenny continues to challenge her mother.

"Well, it's," the Doctor shakes her head, cursing her logic of all things going into that kid, "that's different."

"How?" Jenny leans to face her mother directly. The redheaded woman takes on a perfectly maternal warning expression and Jenny at least has the sense not to get in her face while it's there.

"Not like you indeed," John scoffs from his seat. "I have never seen her speechless like this. You keep on, Jenny."

"Don't you encourage her," the Doctor scolds him. She raps her nails against her cheek in thought. How can they best get out of this mess?—without taking Jenny with them? She can hear the troops chanting; this is not going to end well. "They're getting ready to move out, and we have to get past that guard."

"I can deal with him," Jenny volunteers without a second thought.

"No, you will not, you're not even coming with us," the Doctor points a finger, making Jenny back up from it.

"Wait, shouldn't she, though? I mean, she's your daughter." John tries to ease the tension in the room while maintaining a protective position by Jenny. He doesn't know exactly what has the Doctor so unlike herself but it's no direct fault of Jenny's, and maybe the girl could do her mother some good. "Have you got your stethoscope?"

The Doctor sighs but gives it to John nonetheless. She watches him and knows what he's doing. He smiles and she knows what it means. "She has two hearts?"

"Yeah," he affirms. The Doctor backs into the corner, though. It's not a motion of fear, but more of exhaustion, a haunted kind of movement trauma victims carry with them. "Is she a Time Lord, then?"

"What's a Time Lord?" Jenny asks. She doesn't understand, but it's something important. John was kind enough to believe in her so why is her own mother having such problems. Is she disappointed? Maybe that's it, Jenny thinks. Maybe it's like the story of creation. She breathed life into something and she sighed; maybe that sigh was of disappointment.

"It's who I am," the Doctor admits with difficulty. She approaches Jenny again, with the same intimidating stance as before. This time, though, she takes the girl's chin in her hand. The Doctor's eyes spark and Jenny's follow suit. "You are an echo of who I am: a Time Lord. It's a sum of knowledge, a code of shared history and shared suffering." The Doctor and Jenny both break away, looking scared and physically drained. Jenny is supported by John while the Doctor leans against the wall. "It's gone now, though."

"A war," Jenny mutters. That connection, a link into her mother's mind. By God, that was…there isn't a word for it. There was so much to understand, like the whole universe, all of time, was crammed into her. There were amazing things, but also awful, horrifying things.

"A war," the Doctor confirms. "A war, so large…everything is gone."

"You," Jenny looks at her mother in a new light. She had a family - one Jenny can't see - and a life. The memories are foggy, like trying to look out of glasses that have misted up from the temperature. She still knows, like a distant instinct telling her, what happened. "You drew up plans, played your part."

"Yes," the Doctor looks so tired as she says it.

"How are we different, then?" Jenny goes up to her mother, looking into her eyes. They're bleak, unlike before, and hollow seeming. These memories are so draining. "Why are we different?"

"You can't see what I see, you don't know what I know," the Doctor looks at Jenny. This girl is a few hours old. The Doctor raises her hands to Jenny's cheeks but gets a whisper of a touch before she lowers them again, like she has been hurt by it. "You don't deserve that burden. You might be a soldier but you don't deserve the burden of a Time Lord. You're not even a day old."

"Well, how old are you?" Jenny asks in earnest.

"Almost a thousand years." The weight of the statement carries itself, and makes the air in the room heavier by extension. There is almost a millennium of pain and burden in her voice, in her mind, in her eyes.

"Doesn't mean you deserve to bear that burden alone," John interjects when he feels it appropriate. Jenny moves to allow him access to the Doctor. She looks up at him, eyes glassy. It breaks his heart but it's better than the dark blankness that held them before. "You carry so much with you, shouldering the pain of time itself, but maybe this is an opportunity for you to teach someone else of it. There might be pain, but there is in any learning experience, right? What's the good of learning and gaining if there's nothing you give in return?"

Jenny watches in absolute awe. She has barely witnessed interaction of her own kind, let alone of humans (or Time Lords). John holds her mother's cheeks tenderly, forcing her eyes to meet his. It's not like the connection she held with the Doctor, though. This doesn't seem quite so tangible. This is more like a a surreptitious sharing of words and meaning through the unspoken. It's like offering a hug through the eyes, or warming the heart with words. It's fascinating. What interests Jenny most is when tears slip from her mother's eyes. In instinctual caring Jenny wishes them away, fretful at seeing her mother sad (strange, she thinks, how the machine gave her no instinctual love for a parent yet she feels it naturally). There's no need, though, as John wipes them away with his thumbs as gently as a flower petal shirks off a raindrop. He leans in, and at first Jenny thinks he might kiss them away, but instead he whispers shushes, and 'there-there' against her cheeks. He does kiss her hair,and it seems less personal than a kiss to the flesh. Jenny tells herself she'll ask John about the logistics of it later.

"There, now, how do we get out of here?" John asks with an encouraging smile. To his great relief the Doctor smiles back, seeming to come back to her normal self. He reminds himself that she's also probably recovering from the Poison Sky incident. She might act immune but all that compassion in her is probably just as heavy a weight on her as it is key in making her the Doctor.

"I can still help, you know," Jenny offers, seeing how the intimacy has lessened. "That soldier is male, I am a female, I should be able to distract him-"

"Wait," both John and the Doctor interrupt for different reasons. John flushes pink and scratches the back of his neck. He looks to the Doctor then down at his feet in embarrassment. She takes it as her cue to step forward. "Jenny, darling, you are a female, but how much do you actually know about female and male interaction?"

"I only know that males seem to find females distracting," Jenny reasons out verbally. "Their eyes seem attracted to certain sections of our bodies. That young soldier stares here a lot."

The Doctor chuckles as Jenny gestures to her breasts, "he is a bloke after all."

"And John stares at yours an awful lot too," Jenny points out. She is still a bit confused as to why the Doctor turns a shade of pink in her cheeks, while the back of John's neck seems to have gone entirely red. "What does that mean?"

"I'll…tell you later," the Doctor harrumphs as she stands. With a hand at Jenny's back she sends her to stand with John. "You two stay out of sight for a bit, and Jenny, don't you go trying this."

John gets a bad feeling but only raises his eyebrow. His hand rests on Jenny's shoulder, and clenches anxiously as the guard approaches the bars. The Doctor bats her eyelashes a bit, fingering the bars delicately. The guard leans in to hear what she is saying in a low, husky tone. John meshes his teeth tight as the Doctor captures the soldier's lips in hers, making a falsified moaning sound for show. All the while her hand seeks the gun at his belt. He only realizes it when the clack of the safety breaks him from his daze. The Doctor is looking sly as ever as she commands him to open the door quietly. "Yeah, Jenny…don't you go trying that."

"Go Mum!" Jenny bounces and claps excitedly at the new show of behavior. How entertaining that was! "Why are you angry, John? Mum got us out of jail."

"Yeah, brilliant," he grunts unhappily as they head for the door. They sneak down a hallway, him in the back, when the Doctor backs them up.

"That's the way out," she says to Jenny, who is grasped by the shoulders to prevent her from walking any which way she pleases.

"Right," Jenny readies the gun the Doctor pulled off the soldier but is stopped.

"Don't you dare, young lady," the Doctor scolds her progenated child.

"Well you're not goin' and kissin' him, that's for sure," John grumbles roughly.

"Why is John so angry that you kissed that bloke, Mum?" Jenny asks with a thumb gestured towards the brown haired man.

"Never you mind," the Doctor mutters, making a feasible effort not to meet his gaze. "I have just the thing."

The Doctor Sonics the far wall, making a few rocks crumble down. It works as a distraction and the soldier responds to it. She's about to sneak right behind him when Jenny clobbers him right in the back of his neck. "Oi, what was that for?"

"It worked, didn't it?" the blond rebuts.

"I am not going to argue with you on this," the Doctor flattens her brows but leads them on. She traces the memory of the map in her mind. "This is the tunnel we saw earlier."

"You got a pen, and some paper?" John asks as he finds another set of those numbers. "These end differently than the ones from earlier."

"Always thinking, both of you," Jenny muses at…well, she could call them her parents, couldn't she? The Doctor is her mother and she could very well call John the Doctor's mate, in a sense of the word. What a pair they make! "What do you do, exactly?"

"She," John begins proudly, "saves planets, rescues civilizations, defeats terrible creatures…and runs a lot."

"And he helps me through it all, brilliant as he is," the Doctor ads, sure to include how important John is to her— and things in general. Finally a wall slides after being Sonicked and she stands. "Here we are!—there's that running he mentioned!"

John spares Jenny a small look of amusement before they take off. They round a corner only to be met with a web of lasers. The Doctor goes about rewiring the whatnot. "Wait, there are more numbers. There are always eight digits, counting down."

"I'll hold them off," Jenny declares but the Doctor takes her arm. "It's them or us."

"That does not mean you have to kill them. Hurting people—killing them, it's like a disease that will never let you go. You always have a choice." Despite her words Jenny still runs towards the sound of Cobb and his troupes. The Doctor goes back to her work to try and ignore her hearts shouting and crying for her - now only - child to come back. The lasers blink out and she calls. "Jenny, come on!"

"Jenny, leave them, let's go," John calls to her as well. He takes the Doctor's hand on instinct and the two run to the end of the hall. When he turns back Jenny is almost— "Jenny, no, stop!"

The blond skids to a halt as the lasers blink back into place. She sighs to herself, determined to prove herself of her mother's make. Tossing the gun aside she smirks her mother's patented smirk. "Guess I'll have to manage. Watch and learn, Mum!"

John's brows rise to his hairline as Jenny back-flips in and around the lasers. She never falters, never hesitates, and never hits them. He looks at the Doctor, who is no less amazed at it. "Can you do that?"

The Doctor doesn't answer as her jaw hangs open until Jenny is once again standing upright. Instead she hugs the girl tightly, "you were brilliant!"

Jenny winks at John, who gives her a thumbs up. "I didn't kill him!—Cobb, I mean, you were right, I had a choice!"

"Oh, she's big on the choice, yeah," John pats his girls on the backs, gesturing that they should really be on their way. The three continue running down the halls until they find a complex. The Doctor goes about searching out the right route.

"So, what's the travelling like, with her?" Jenny asks. Her mind is abuzz with memories that come more into focus as time goes on. There are some she still can't see, like seeing the stars with a man named Lee. She can see the memories of John clearly, though. Those memories are…amazing, and sometimes scary, and very…emotionally loaded. With each memory received there is the filter of emotional perception with them. John's are always put through several filters, trying to be understood. There's always an unknown element attached to them.

"Oh, it's amazing," John grins at Jenny's curiosity. "It can be terrifying, yeah, but brilliant, and just totally wonderful. I've seen whole new worlds, I never could have imagined, wit her."

"New worlds, oh, I'd love to see those," Jenny sighs.

"Oh, I bet you will," John looks from Jenny to the Doctor. "Won't she, Doctor? Do think Jenny will see some new worlds?"

The Doctor smiles at the tone John takes, like the tone of an adult entertaining a child. Jenny is like a child, in many ways, and unlike one in many others. Still, she supposes either way, Jenny is _her_ child. "I suppose she will."

"I can come, then?" Jenny bounces up and down in excitement and hugs her mother tightly. Afterwards she hugs John in the same manner, all the while repeating, "thankyouthankyouthankyou!"

"There we are!" John smiles warmly at her.

"Come on, let's hurry up!" Jenny rushes off, completely enthused.

"Careful!" the Doctor shouts after her. The instinct gives way to thought, though, and soon she's saddened by it all.

"What's wrong?" John asks, knowing too well what that face means. "I know that look, Doctor, so what's wrong?"

"It's just," the Doctor sighs. "John, I've been a mother before."

"I know," John admits nonchalantly, figuring it's the best way to approach the situation. Seeing her surprise he continues in a softened, feather light tone. "You're too sweet, too good, too kind not to have been."

The Doctor considers his words of observation best left for a later time. Instead she swallows heavily. "I lost it all along with my home. I thought that part of me died with them, and now, she, Jenny…it's like seeing their ghosts."

"I'm sorry," John whispers to her, giving her hand a squeeze. He no longer wonders when the hand holding begins or ends, just figures it's there unless otherwise occupied. "Why didn't you ever tell me, though? You talk all the time yet you never really say anything."

"I just," the Doctor shrugs sadly, "even now, I can't bear to face it. The part of me that was ripped away with them, the pain that swallows you. I couldn't…I can't."

"She'll help you," John says less as a statement and more as a promise. "I will, too. I can't imagine what it was like, but if it takes me forever, I'll make sure you're happy, so long as it's in my power."

"I don't know if that's something you or she can help, John," the Doctor admits in defeat.

"I don't say this to you, much, you know, but," John stops walking and quietly begs the Doctor's attention with his eyes; "I think you're wrong."

"Time to run again!" Jenny zooms back to them in time to grab her mother's hand and resume motion seamlessly. "Keep up, John!"

"Those numbers," John takes his hand from Jenny's and takes out his notepad.

"We're trapped!" Jenny says between John and her mother.

"This is a door!"

"This can't be a cataloging system," John murmurs as he writes.

"They're almost here!" Jenny bounces with urgency.

"Then get over here!" the Doctor orders her daughter.

"They're too similar," John clicks his pen.

"Come on!" the Doctor takes Jenny and John with her, Sonicking the door behind them. As they turn she looks up. "It's a fusion-drive transport! This is a ship!"

"The original one, like, for the colonists?" John looks around as well and tries not to trip over his feet while following.

"Maybe, but the power cells would have burnt out in time," the Doctor rushes to a control panel and pulls out her glasses. "This one is working. Ship's log, mission commander dead, human and Hath have divided into factions!—that's why war broke out, they turned on each other, it's a power vacuum."

"Look!" John points to a digital display. The Doctor joins him, still wearing the glasses (he is delighted to notice). "I've got it! I spent six months working as a temp in Hounslow Library and I mastered the Dewey Decimal system in two days. I am _good_ with numbers; it's been staring us in the face!"

"What?" Jenny asks, caught between the rapid fire speech of her mother and John intertwined.

"It's the date," John smirks. "Each section's code is a completion date for the section."

"Finish the area stamp the date on it," the Doctor nods.

"Look at the date today," John gestures and his and the Doctor's face light up with simultaneous bursts of brilliance: "seven days."

"What does that mean?" Jenny asks, entirely confused. She'd be more worried about being dim if it weren't for the fact that her mother is a genius and at least says that John is too.

"This war started only seven days ago," says John.

"They said years," Jenny shakes her head in disbelief.

"No, they said generations," her mother pipes in.

"And if they're all like you, they can twenty generations in a day," John bursts in victory. This might be the most brilliant moment of his entire life!

"John, you're a genius!" The Doctor shakes John by the shoulders at his brilliance. She could just kiss him!—oh, but this isn't the time for that. "The source must have something to do with this, come on!"

Jenny follows the adults, still caught up in the excitement, but a little disappointed she didn't get to see what a kiss is like (she thought for sure her mother was going to kiss John). "Can you smell something?"

"Flowers," John says to the Doctor. They follow her down a new set of ramps and into a veritable greenhouse. "What is this?"

"It's the source: a terraforming device. It makes a stable ecosystem for uninhabitable planets." The Doctor pets the orb of glowing gases like it's a creature. Jenny hears the approaching soldiers first and takes position. To the Doctor's relief John drags her close, next to the terraformer. "Cobb, this war can't be won, you need to listen to me! It won't be over and it won't be won if you continue on! You can't distort your own reason for fighting any longer! This is what you want—this is the source! It's a bubble of gases for rejuvenating a planet! Methane, hydrogen, ammonia, amino acids, nucleic acids, proteins, all to make this planet a home. That' all you'r fighting for…is a home."

"I am the Doctor," she picks up the terraformer. "By my word this war is done. There will be no more death, no more killing…just light. Light and life that can be brought about by this. I declare this war over!"

The light that bursts from the terraformer is entirely mystical, despite its scientific origins. It glows with colors that dance like a fiery aurora. It draws all eyes to it, in its beauty, and pure, wonderful magnificence.

"What's happening?" Jenny asks her mother.

"The gases will intermingle with the atmosphere and trigger the terraforming process." The Doctor looks down at her daughter lovingly and sighs. "It's a new world."

"A new world," Jenny sighs as well. It doesn't escape her, the irony of how the woman who scoffed at their myth has just made it a reality. A woman creates a world, and when she sees what she has done, she sighs. Jenny decides that the sigh in the story will be a sigh of contentment. Take that Cobb—oh no, Cobb: "no!"

The Doctor reaches Jenny too late, and only feels her blood on her palm. Panic overtakes her hearts. "Jenny, Jenny, sweetheart, look at me."

"Jenny, honey, come on," John whispers, but his human instinct tells him it's for not. He strokes her forehead, and she smiles at him, teary eyed. He looks at the Doctor before taking her hand in quiet solidarity.

"A new world," Jenny whispers with all the life she has left in her. "It's so beautiful."

"Jenny, come on, love, you've got more worlds to see," the Doctor strokes Jenny's blond hair away from her cheeks. She kisses her brow as tears fall onto the blonde's ivory skin. The girl only succeeds in wiping the tears away with her thumb, as she had seen John do, before the life slips from her. Her greyish eyes flutter shut and her body becomes limp. The Doctor's strangled gasp is raspy as she tries to calm herself. She can't, though, not this time. Her eyes are full of mourning and pain but her brows knit together. She looks up.

John shoots to hold the Doctor. Her form is hunched in his arms, but her breathing is forced through her teeth, like a feral growling. Her eyes are on the murderer across the way. John knows that if she really wanted to she could throw him across the room with little effort. She doesn't, though, because they both know what she wants to do. Instead, John stands.

The room watches as he walks to Cobb with strong steps. He takes the gun - the very weapon that took Jenny - and points it at Cobb. He meets the man's eyes. The barrel is pressed to the older man's brow, stabbing into him. John breathes heavily. Cobb is held still by his men, who make no move to intervene. Finally, John kneels to Cobb, holding the pistol by the barrel. "She said that this new world will be a home. A home brings life and healing and light. It's no place for pain, or killing. You disgrace her presence, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't and she wouldn't either."

John tosses the gun with such force it sparks against the metal on which it skids away. "When you start this new world remember this! Remember that this new world is your home, where light and life and good must be your foundation! The foundation of a home is someone who wouldn't ever! Put an end to it, never kill again, never look back on this chapter of your past, just make a home."

The Doctor sits by Jenny solemnly. Her hearts are in so much pain, but in a distant echo through the numbness of shock. It's like her soul is aching. She knows this pain, though, she knows it of old. John's hand falls to her shoulder and she takes it in her own. It's not as heavy a weight as she expected it to feel like, but rather just a warmth. "Can you take her?"

"Of course," John whispers. He and the Doctor stand, John taking Jenny in his arms. He cradles her head against his chest without a word, or a sniffle. He keeps his head level, letting tears fall silently, if they must. The Doctor walks beside him, taking on the same, stoic, self-preserving expression. When they reach the base camp they lie Jenny on a table, covered in a pristine white cloth. The light brought in by the terraforming hits her face. Her hair becomes almost white, while the marks from her mother's tears are still visible of her pale cheek. "What about Jenny?"

"Let us give her a proper ceremony," the young soldier asks.

The Doctor only nods at him. She then nods to John that they're leaving. He follows without protest. Her steps to the TARDIS are heavy, and once inside she seems more drained and sad than ever.

John watches the Doctor worriedly. He can't imagine the pain of losing a child and now the Doctor has experienced at least twice. Part of him wonders if making her accept Jenny was the right thing. Then he remembers how the light had reappeared in her eyes, despite the reminder of her home's war and destruction around them.

John approaches silently but the Doctor shows no worry or resistance as he hugs her from behind. He kisses the crown of her head and sighs. His hands hover over her shoulders before resting over her hearts. They're slow, and even, but they sound so sad. "You feel that pain, in there. It doesn't mean you were wrong to let her in…it proves you were right."

The Doctor takes in a sodden breath. Her tears fall onto John's hands but doesn't seem to mind. He remains a warmth around her, embracing her as fully as possible, offering every comfort he can. "What now?"

"We go on," John whispers to the back of her neck. "We live, we remember. What else can we do?"

"The TARDIS brought us here because of Jenny, and then we ended up creating her," the Doctor mumbles without the usual crispness to her speech. "An endless paradox…where do you want to go?"

John contemplates the best answer as the Doctor pulls from his embrace just to turn and face him. "Let's find a new world…for her."

The Doctor smiles. It pulls at the corner of her lips, dragging them upward no matter how much she doesn't want to. John's gentle smile drags it out of her though. She thinks she might love nothing else in the world so much as him right now. "Onwards?"

John feels relief flood every cell of his body at the sign of hope in her.

"Allons-y."


	8. The Unicorn and the Wasp

"Ooh, smell that air!" The Doctor declares as she steps out of the TARDIS. She stretches her arms, feeling refreshed and new. "Grass and lemonade, and a hint of mint! I'd say…the 1920's!"

"You can tell what year it is by smelling?" John asks, skeptical but not entirely disbelieving.

"That and there's a vintage car coming up the drive," the Doctor points. She's not sure by which she's more chuffed—that John was willing to believe she could tell the year by smell or that she was able to out herself of it. As they approach there seems to be a party in the making.

"Never mind bizarro world, a party in the 1920's is more like it!" John grins at the Doctor.

"What's bizzaro world?" she asks.

"It's a superhero…comic book…thing, never mind, let's go!" John taps the Doctor's arm. He's about to walk out plain as day but the Doctor drags him towards the TARDIS.

"Hold on, Johnny-Boy, you've gotta be properly dressed for an event like this." The Doctor sends him to his room while she goes to hers (wherever that mysterious place may be).

John finds a brown pinstripe suit on his bed. "Ooh, you really know what suits me, eh, old girl?"

_I do imagine the Doctor will be most pleased._

John smirks as he adjusts the shirt collar and tie. He takes care to swiff his hair back, although it only ends up standing on all ends. Never minding it, he goes back out to the console room. The Doctor is strangely absent, and he pouts a little. '_We'll be late for cocktails._'

_Patience, John, you'll be rewarded for the wait. _

"Here we are," the Doctor emerges. She has given up tying her hair entirely up on her head. Instead she lets half of it be wound into a knot while the rest flows down, freely falling about her shoulders in sproingy curls. She's clad in a soft sleek navy dress with shimmering gold design, truly iconic of the age. She continues to fiddle with her hair, if nothing else to distract her from how intensely John stares. "What do you think; flapper or slapper?"

John smiles, lips pulled thin. She does look stunning, radiant, positively breath taking. "Flapper, you look lovely."

The Doctor takes John's arm and the two make their way to the garden. It is positively lovely outside, and easy jazz oozes from a gramophone on the lawn. A butler approaches, offering drinks. The Doctor puts in for a side car (saying something about Time Lords being less affected by alcohol) and John puts in for a lime soda. The Doctor spies grapes - she really loves those things, but detests pears of all things - and snatches a few for herself.

"May I announce Lady Clemency Eddison," another, more elderly gentleman call out. Beside him is an older woman, proper and pristine, with hanky in hand and walking tall.

"Lady Eddison," the Doctor greets, kissing the air around the woman's cheeks for show of familiarity. "Why it has been ages since we met at the Ambassador's reception; I'm the Doctor, and this is John Smith, of the Chiswick Smiths."

"Spiffng day Milady," John bows to the woman, kissing her hand rightly.

"Ooh, my, and a pleasure it is," Lady Eddison becomes a fluster as John winks at her devilishly. "You must look out for this one, Doctor."

"Yes, I must," the Doctor nods at the Lady before glancing towards John. The initial expression of amusement transitions into one of questioning irritation. '_Where the hell did that come from?_'

"You never can be too careful," Lady Eddison continues, oblivious to the domestic static between the two. "What with the Unicorn on the loose."

"Oh, a Unicorn, that's brilliant!" John declares but quiets as the Doctor shakes her head.

"_The_ Unicorn—a jewel thief, nobody knows who he is, but he has just struck, snatching Lady Babington's pearls right out from under her."

"Funny place to wear pearls," John offers facetiously as he and the Doctor are handed their drinks. He takes the lime soda with a nod to the waiter while the Doctor is handed a martini glass with an orange wedge on the rim. The two share a look before turning again. The Doctor takes a perfectly elegant sip while John struggles to find liquid, finding the damned lime wedge in the way.

"May I announce Colonel Hugh Curbishley and the Honourable Roger Curbishley."

"Forgive me for not standing," the man in the wheelchair nods to them both, particularly the Doctor. "I haven't been the same since that flu epidemic back in '18."

John watches carefully as Roger comes to the Doctor, eyeing her up and down appreciatively.

"My word, you are a super lady," he schmoozes, shaking her hand.

"Oh, I like the cut of your jib," she quirks an eyebrow at him coyly, betraying no real flattery. Her arms cross as she brings her drinks to her lips, glancing up at him through thick lashes; "chin-chin."

"Hello, I'm John," he greets Roger, though his periphery is still focused on the Doctor's odd display.

"Your usual, sir?" A boy cuts in with drinks.

"Thank you Davenport," Roger looks the boy deep in the eyes, "just the way I like it."

"Why is she an Eddison while her husband and son are Curbishley's?" John asks, still finding it rather hard to get to the lime soda in his tall glass.

"The Eddison title descends through her. One day Roger will be a Lord," the Doctor's gaze returns to the man who eyed her similarly moments past. She seems to be examining him, like most subjects, but with a little more intrigue than John would like to see.

"Miss Robina Redmond," is announced.

"She's the absolute hit of the social scene: a must," the Lady greets first a young lady, then a Reverend. He tells her of a break in, but how the Christian Fathers taught him forgiveness and the like.

"Some of these boys could use a decent thrashing," Roger puts in.

"Couldn't agree more, sir," the boy from earlier concurs, again, with the blinding hot eye contact of a lover.

"Of course," the Doctor sighs the way she does when finding a disappointing result. "All the decent men are on the other bus…that's what they say, right?"

"Or right under your nose," John disputes. The Doctor looks at him sharply in surprise. "They…say that too…you know."

"Now, who is this special guest you promised us?"

All the attention is brought to a new face walking in. Lady Eddison holds out a hospitable hand to the woman. She walks with a subdued loveliness about her. Her hair, short and swooping blonde, contrasts with her strikingly pale blue eyes. It's like the brightest sunlight in the lightest of skies. Everyone claps as she bows her head graciously.

John offers his hand to the woman.

"Agatha Christie," she mentions quietly.

"What about her?" John asks.

"That's me," the woman turns more self-conscious.

"No!" John's jaw drops and he breaks out into a near manic grin. Lady Eddison looks satisfied in his admiration of her, and Agatha blushes a bit at his response.

"Agatha Christie, I adore your books!" The Doctor takes Agatha's hand warmly in both of hers. "I was just saying the other day, I said I bet she's brilliant!—I'm the Doctor, this is John."

"You make a rather unusual couple," Agatha smiles fondly at them despite the oddly ecstatic greeting.

"Oh, we're not," the two begin gesturing between themselves, eyes dismayed. In slow motion they seek out each other's gazes. It's the kind of situation in which there is only one right answer and a million wrong ones. They've been mistaken for a couple before, but they either didn't correct it or didn't have to. How to correct this? There is a kind of unspoken ambivalence hanging in the air. No, they are not a couple, but would saying so aloud tear too deep a wound?—on or between them? "We're not married."

"Obviously not," Agatha goes on smiling just as slyly as she was, "no wedding ring." No wedding ring: not married, but she never said she doubted they were a couple, the two of them. She leaves that mystery to them, though.

John glances at his hand briefly, making a rumbling sound of approval at Agatha's ability of deduction. The Doctor does the same, though he feels slightly saddened by how bare her left hand is. "You don't miss a trick."

"I'd stay that way, if I were you. The thrill is in the chase, never in the capture," Agatha speaks fluidly, though the significant fluttering of her eyes shutting is sign enough of the word meanings.

The Lady Eddison leads Mrs. Christie away but the Doctor's gears are beginning to grind. John stays where he is, though he can smell the smoke coming through her ears. She wanders to the Colonel, snatching the paper with sleight of hand before anyone but John can notice. The groups shares a laugh over something but she doesn't listen.

"What's up?" John asks, sliding from the crowd to the Doctor's side. She taps the date while gazing around, hoping everyone is still occupied. They are engaged in conversation, though mercifully not still interrogating poor Agatha about her husband.

"This date," the Doctor returns in hushed susserating, "it's the day Agatha Christie disappeared. She just discovered her husband was having an affair."

"You'd never think, looking at her, smiling away," John frowns. It's a shame when men don't treasure the women they're with, he thinks.

"She's British, moneyed, unfortunately so: they carry on." The Doctor measures Agatha and the lawn crowd in her gaze. "Except for this time. No one knows what exactly happened. She vanishes tonight; her car will be found tomorrow, by the side of a lake, and ten days later Agatha will turn up at a hotel in Harrogate with no memory of it. Whatever it was… "

"It's about to happen," John finishes on edge. Sure enough, Lady Eddison's Indian right-hand-woman rushes out of the house screaming of murder. John rushes in with the Doctor's hand in his, though her heels make running harder than normal. They, swiftly followed by everyone else, flood up the stairs, into the library.

The Doctor pulls her glasses out of John's inside breast pocket - when the bloody hell did she put those in there?! - and bends to the body. She glances over the man, noting the damage to his balding head and how the watch on his wrist is cracked. "Blow to the head with a blunt instrument; watch broke when he fell; time of death is a quarter past four."

She moves to the desk as John finds a bit of pipe on the ground. Her eyes find Agatha's reflection in the bookcase, where the blond has picked up a charred bit of paper and slipped it into her sache. "There's nothing worth killing for in here."

"Professor Peach in the library with a lead piping? What, is this the birth of the game 'Clue'?" John levels his gaze over the Doctor's shoulder.

"Someone should call the police," Agatha declares before the crowd can become too overwrought with the commotion.

"No need!" the Doctor slips her hand into John's suit pocket again - when did she put all that in there?! - and fishes out the Psychic Paper. "This is Junior Inspector Smith from Scotland Yard, I'm the Doctor and Coroner who accompanies him in the field and oversees his training."

"I say," Lady Eddison is aghast.

"Agatha was right, please proceed to the sitting room, I will talk with each of you." The Doctor glances at John, who tries not to look too caught off guard by the developments. She then looks at Agatha, who seems at least willing to roll with the punches.

"The Doctor is right, let's keep the room clear and do as she says," Agatha ushers the other guests away.

"Why am I the Inspector?" John asks in a flurry of hand waving.

"There weren't police women in this age," the Doctor rolls her eyes as she scrapes some goo off the floor. "This…is morphic residue. It holds a species's genetic immune code."

"So the murderer is an alien in human form?" John asks, though he dreads the answer to that.

"Yep, it's a murder, a mystery, and Agatha Christie," the Doctor bounces her brows a bit excitedly. She rushes downstairs, holding her dress properly although it doesn't hinder her movements any.

"Someone call me?" Agatha reveals herself from the little alcove of a hall at the bottom of the stairs. She scares the living daylights out of John although the Doctor simply smiles at her.

"Agatha, yes, if you would accompany me in questioning the suspects, John is going to investigate upstairs." The Doctor goes over to John and puts a hand to his chest briefly. Both he and Agatha look surprised and anticipatory at the motion but are disappointed when she pulls a magnifying glass out of his inside pocket. "Go on, then, you'll need that."

"When did you…" John simply takes it from her slender hand with a bewildered look on his face. He continues up the stairs, muttering about how he doesn't even want to know what she stuffed into his trouser pockets.

"Shall we, then, Agatha?" the Doctor tucks a curl behind her ear. Agatha nods formally and leads her way in, where the Reverend is already seated. He seems fidgety, and nervous. The Doctor supposes that is just natural human behavior, though. Agatha takes a seat and the Doctor paces, to put the pressure on. "Reverend, where were you at a quarter past four?"

"Why, yes, I was unpacking in my room."

"Were you alone?" asks Agatha.

"With the Lord one is never truly alone," the Reverend looks away from Agatha and to the Doctor. "Doctor?"

She shakes her head and sends him out. "Who should we question next?"

Agatha sits thoughtful. "I think Roger would be a good choice. He'll be on edge, but determined to one up whatever he thinks the Reverend has said."

"Ooh, good choice," the Doctor tips to Agatha. "You noticed Roger and Davenport, then?"

"Oh, painfully transparent, those two," Agatha smiles at the amiable woman. She can't help but think of the Doctor herself and Mister John Smith when she says this. Then, of course, she remembers with whom she is now in league and retreats into herself. "Unless you think otherwise, Doctor."

"Why, not at all, Agatha," the Doctor walks past the back of Agatha's chair and dances a friendly hand across her shoulder. "You're brilliant."

Roger strides in, all gentlemanly pomp. When asked where he was he sits a little straighter, makes his chest a little higher. "Oh, yes, I was taking a constitutional in the fields behind the house."

"Were you alone?" the Doctor scrutinizes him.

"Just taking a stroll, alone—all alone, totally alone. Alone as the proverbial cloud, one might say, always…alone."

The Doctor drifts off as Roger blabbers on. '_Probably in the farmhouse with your beloved having a good old romp around in the hay…wouldn't mind one of those-_'

"That'll be all," Agatha waves Roger out. She scribbles something down on a pad and has him send in the next person in line. In comes the young lady Redmond and both women grow edgier. The younger woman looks at them with a kind of audacity about her brightly painted lips and smoky dusted eyes.

"And where were you?" the Doctor questions without a drop of warmth.

"At a quarter past four?—I went to the toilet," the lady begins.

The Doctor notes the wording of it as Robina goes on, but finds nothing else of use. "We've only got your word on it."

"That's your problem, Doctor, not mine." Oh, this Robina Redmond is surely a smug little thing.

The Doctor waits until she has shut the door before smiling at Agatha secretively. "She could stand to ease up on the lip coloring, eh?"

Agatha smiles in genuine ease at the comment, and even offers a small chuckle of amusement. This Doctor is in a good humor for one of her business. Quite an accomplished woman, she seems, in their age, making her own way in the world, and with the dashing John Smith at her side! Agatha decides to reserve judgement on the Doctor for later. "Shall we question the Colonel?"

"I don't know if there's any need. You may, if you like, but I won't pay attention, in all honesty, either way. When I first met him he had fresh ink smattered along his thumb, so I'd guess he was in his study. Just to be fair we might as well have him in with his wife, to save time. If Lady Eddison is going to reveal anything it's that she was preparing for the party. If she withholds anything it's that she tends to slip the old Irish charm into her afternoon tea. I could smell it on her breath when I greeted her earlier today."

Agatha finds the Doctor correct on all deductions. She takes notes as she interviews each of them, while the Doctor pretends to do something medical. Agatha sees the reflection of the Doctor's book in the mirror on the wall. It is not a copy of Grey's Anatomy but rather she is doodling what looks to be a stick figure speaking French with a magnifying glass. The woman was also right in saying she wouldn't pay any attention to those she wouldn't find as helpful. Finally, Agatha speaks up to recapture her attention. "No alibis for any of them, but they were doing just as you had theorized, Doctor. We must look for a motive."

"Yes, the reason a human being does what they do," the Doctor murmurs to herself as she and Agatha pace together in solidarity.

Agatha continues to be bemused by the Doctor. The red haired woman is most odd, but not unlikable in being so. On the contrary, her special kind of exuberance is sort of…uplifting to Agatha. It's certainly a balm to her soul to be working the little grey cells again. "If I may, Doctor, how is it a doctor of Scotland Yard has such deductive power?"

"Oh," the Doctor bounces on her heels, trying to think of a reasonable explanation. "You know…well, I work with so many…detectives I suppose I sort of just…pick it up."

"Well, you could be the genuine article as far as I'm concerned," Agatha smiles at her new found comrade. "I don't know why you have me working with you on this, I'll be of no help so long as you're in capacity."

"Oh, don't say that, Agatha, you're brilliant," the Doctor smiles. Her voice takes on a breathy, honey-like tone. It's friendly, and warms Agatha from her toes to the tips of her fingers and comes out in her smile. Then, the Doctor changes a little, and her face becomes less than pitying, but sympathetic. "I know you don't feel it, right now…I'm sorry…about your husband."

"Oh," Agatha sighs in dismay. Of course her humiliation is the stuff of social gossip. Then again, it might just be the Doctor noticing the most microscopic of clues yet again. "Yes, well…what's a woman to do? He found a younger, prettier thing… "

"Yeah, easy to predict, blokes," the Doctor concurs with Agatha. She takes a seat and the blond woman follows suit, leaning in to match her body language. "I can relate, actually. You see, I had a husband…a long, _long_, time ago. I was in love with him once upon a time, but it…seems like a thousand years ago. Anyway, I uncovered how rubbish he was as time went on. One day I discovered he was having an affair, and I would have left that second if…well, I would have if I could have."

"No, we can never just leave, can we?" Agatha asks and agrees in the same utterance. She wishes she could just leave, and not be questioned, or gossiped about. She wishes she could just…disappear—get away from it all, even if just for a little while. To get off the subject she turns back to sly grinning at the Doctor."I can't imagine Mister Smith would ever."

"No, he'd never," the Doctor mumbles to herself before thinking. When she does catch what has crossed her mind and from her mouth she jumps, spooked by herself and her own words. "Not that he, or I—we're not-"

"I know you're not married, Doctor, and whether you're connected, or intended, I don't judge," Agatha shakes her head. "I daresay your camaraderie extended to me must be returned. Mister Smith seems a prime example of a gentleman and you are nothing short of a model woman."

"John is sweet," the Doctor allows herself to say as if it were the most incriminating statement to be said.

"Although, there is one clue unaccounted for."

"That little bit of paper you picked up?" the Doctor rebuffs easily. Agatha looks surprised and she shrugs. "I saw your reflection in the glass of the bookcase."

Agatha concedes that yet again the Doctor has proved a most on-par adversary in detection. Who is this woman? She now knows that she was married, and that she is definitely smitten with Mister Smith. Agatha both rejoices in the affirmation of her deduction and is disappointed that yet another handsome chap is besotted by a gorgeous woman such as the Doctor. Although if any woman would capture attention, it would be the Doctor, with her vibrant hair and intellect that would easily overtake your own and dance a minuet with it like you were a puppet. "Well played, Doctor."

"What did it say?" the Doctor leans over in her seat and sees the charred bit in Agatha's fingers. "What's that letter there?"

"It's an 'm', and the word is Maiden," says Agatha. She can practically hear the gears in the Doctor's mind turning, or perhaps that's her grinding her teeth.

The Doctor quirks her lips as she thinks with the steady progress of a train on its tracks. What could that paper be? Would would have the word Maiden in it? It was a singular word, as she saw, but capitalized, which leaves few options. Maybe it was an official document, or a title page of something? Maiden, as in Maiden name, on a marriage or birth certificate?

"Doctor!"

The Doctor springs in response to the voice before she even realizes it's John's. This makes her rush all the more, with Agatha hot on her heels. There's a great clamoring upstairs and they make it just in time to see John jump out of a room. He still holds the magnifying glass but looks even more harried than before. "There is a giant wasp."

"What do you mean a giant wasp?" asks Agatha.

"I mean a wasp," John holds his arms at length, "that's giant! Look at its sting!"

The Doctor immediately bends to the stinger - the length of a rapier - sticking through the door. She collects the goo dripping from it, same as the goo from before she can smell. So, it's an amorphic vespiform with genetically shifting its chamelic code? "What's a transmorphic vespiform doing in this galactic sector?"

"I think I understood some of those words," Agatha reasons aloud.

"Oh, good, because I understood almost none of them," John partly jokes for Agatha's peace of mind and partly admits for his own sake.

"But this is just outrageous, I mean, there is no such thing as a giant wasp," Agatha is proven wrong by a frightful buzzing noise. The three companions rush to see what the source is but only find poor Miss Chandrakala, laid dead on the gravel.

"There!" the Doctor points to a gargantuan wasp, flying above them. It flees back into the house and they follow it. It flees down a hallway, out of sight. "Come on, ya beast, show yourself!"

All the inhabitants of the estate come out of their rooms, looking perplexed and put off by the Doctor's shouting.

"Oh," she stumbles back a bit, beside John, "well that's just cheating."

"Everyone please, to the conservatory," Agatha takes a leader's stance yet again. She finds Lady Eddison and, with the Doctor gently on the other side of her, breaks the news. "Milady, I'm afraid Miss Chandrakala is dead."

"Oh, my faithful companion, this is terrible," Lady Eddison weeps for her loss. "Mrs. Christie, surely you've twigged something."

"Tell us, what would Poirot do?" the Reverand asks, also gently, but still putting Agatha on the spot.

"Heaven's sake, cards on the table, woman. You should be helping us."

"All right, that's enough, the Doctor frowns around the room. She takes a protective stance next to Agatha. Both women are chuffed when John does the same, daring anyone to continue in their brashness.

"I'm just a writer," Agatha sits in distress, at the mercy of the room.

"Surely you can crack it, though," says Redmond. "These happenings, they're exactly like the plots of your books."

"I thought the same thing," John bends to Agatha and pats her hand comfortingly. "Agatha that has to mean something. You are the greatest detective novelist of all time."

Agatha feels the clenching in her chest acutely. She has never liked having eyes on her against her will, but surely they're there, measuring her every move. "I'm sorry everyone, truly I am, but if anyone can help us now, it's the Doctor, not me."

The Doctor sighs unhappily. She had hoped to lift Agatha's spirits a little, but this motley bunch seem to have undone that progress in a matter of seconds. As much as she would like to tear a strip off each of Agatha's verbal abusers there is another time and place. Instead she takes on a disgusted air and cocks her hip. "Away with all of you, I need to work with Agatha in peace."

"Off you go, then," John sees them out then closes the door behind them. Already the Doctor is leading Agatha out a porch door and towards the TARDIS.

"I just have to analyze this, but, um, I'll have my surgical kit there," the Doctor gestures vaguely to the TARDIS, "in our handy dandy…mobile…police…unit. Be back in a jiff, Agatha."

"Has she room to work in there?" Agatha asks John as he comes up beside her, adjusting his suit.

John contemplates how to answer. He can't say it's bigger on the inside, but even he would have trouble moving around if it were dimensionally true, and he's "thin as a rake" as the Doctor likes to put it. "She's…it's much roomier than it looks from the outside."

Agatha huffs in modest defeat and goes to a small gazebo's bench. John follows but she remains sullen. "You're right; these murders are like something of my own creation. It's like someone's mocking me through them. I've had enough scorn for more than one life time."

"Hm," John wiggles his nose and his toes in his shoes. He misses his trainers, though these Oxfords are most becoming, he must admit. "I had a fiance, just a short while ago. I might have wanted to love her more than what was really possible, but I did want to marry her. Turns out she was lying through her teeth. Of course I was lucky in finding the Doctor."

"I should have known you would know," Agatha laments sadly. "I found my husband with another, younger, prettier woman. Isn't that always the way with men?—no offense."

"Oh, none taken," John smiles, entirely willing to give Agatha that one. "Most of us really do deserve it. However, most of us are idiots, so it depends which way you want to see it. For what it's worth, any man who wastes your love is a fool in my books. Speaking of books, yours are my favorite! People love them, they really do! They'll read them for years to come, I guarantee you."

"Hardly great literature," Agatha blushes modestly, although John smith leans into her words, as if protecting them from the cruel light of the world. "I'm afraid my books will be forgotten…hold on."

John walks to a flowerbed with Agatha, it having captured her attention so completely. She fishes into them. "What's this, then?"

"These flowerbeds were perfectly neat, earlier, not some of the stalks are bent over." Agatha reasons as she finds something. Her thin hands clasp a leather bound box. "The Doctor should see this."

"Oh, she's gonna love you for this," John pats Agatha's arm gently before rushing to the TARDIS. He runs with his arms swaying around his beanpole figure like a child would. While he would like to rush right in he really can't with Agatha with him. Instead he halts on the gravel noisily and bangs on the door. "Doctor, I'm with Agatha; we've found something I think you'll quite like to see!"

"Brilliant," the Doctor's voice calls from the other side of the blue wood paneled door. She slips out, making sure to open the door as little as possible around her. Agatha only gets a glimpse of glowing lights from within whatever that thing is. "Fantastic; what have we found?"

"This," Agatha hands the box over.

"Ooh, well isn't that wizard?" the Doctor gazes at his cautiously. "Shall we into the parlor, then? I'm quite fancying a lime soda, myself."

"Molto bene," John pumps his fist before shoving it into his pocket.

Agatha marvels at the wonderful nonsense the two talk. John catches a passing butler and asks for their drinks. The Doctor snags a few grapes rather slyly, like a proper pickpocket. It would be suspicious if it weren't so characteristic of her. Once all seated, the Doctor proceeds.

"Ooh, someone came here tooled up," she murmurs as she unfolds the mysterious little box. It has levels upon levels of lock picking tools. "This is the sort of stuff a thief would use."

"The Unicorn, he's here," Agatha looks up in revelation.

"Your drinks ladies," the older butler from before bows with the silver tray. He smiles at Agatha, and the Doctor, before looking flatly at John, "sir."

"Thank you," the Doctor hops for her soda happily.

"What about the residue-y stuff, what did you find?" John asks, now with a bubbly orange drink.

"Vespiform sting, hives are found in the Silfrax Galaxy, but this one is reenacting a line of your make," the Doctor takes a sip of drink.

"Agatha, what do you think?" John turns to the woman on his right.

"John," the Doctor starts. She's frightfully still, with a pallor to her that's positively ghastly. Her freckles stand out much more against the ashen skin, although there are some pink dots around the base of her neck, as if all the blood vessels were broken there. "Something's inhibiting my enzymes."

"What?" John watches as the Doctor curls in her seat like a child. Her eyes start sparking gold like they do when she's doing something…wibbly…wobbly…timeywhimey!

"I've been poisoned," she chokes out a midst writhing in discomfort. It burns through her veins and rips through her system like the static-y feel of your leg falling asleep, but travelling all throughout your insides.

"What do we do?" John asks the Doctor, who is shifting about, every muscle in her body strained from it.

"Bitter almonds: it's cyanide—sparkling cyanide!" Agatha declares. It's all the Doctor needs to hear before she rushes out of the room. She stumbles her way down into the kitchen, where everyone is frightened by her manic thrashing about. "Doctor, there's no cure, it's fatal!"

"Not for me, it isn't!" The Doctor declares. She's still seething, braced against the counter top and breathing heavily to cope. She can stimulate the inhibited enzymes into reversal. How, though, how does she do that with nothing but a humanoid kitchen environment?! What does she do? Oh, and everyone is a tizzy because she looks like a maniac, and poor John must be worried sick. What does she need?!

"What do you need, Doctor?" John takes her face in his hands and forces her to look at him. Still shaking from the sensation she meets his eyes as evenly as ever.

What does she need? She'd need protein; have enough of that to suck from the ciliary walls of dormant cells. Sodium, she has enough of that from side cars and lime sodas as well. What does she need?! In order to stimulate the enzymes she would have to shock the flow of the meiosis into a reversal—THAT'S IT! She needs a shock, a biological shock, a big shock! What, though?!—gosh, John looks cute with his worried face. "A shock, I need a biological shock - a big ol' shock - here goes!"

John doesn't think as the Doctor grips his face in return and smashes her lips to his. Admittedly his lips are ready for it—like a magnet drawn to its attractor! He does attempt to keep his hands away from her, in case something wibbly-wobbly is going on. Her lips - super pouty, super soft, super warm - taste like lime and grapes and a tingling hint of alcohol. They hit so hard they might be bruised afterwards but John thinks it might just be worth it as the Doctor works his lips over wonderfully. There is only once, twice movement but by God is it amazing. They both stagger in each other's directions from it.

The Doctor finds her telepathy flaring as her lips hit John's. She keeps her thoughts to herself but John's emotional wall hits her like a solid punch to the jaw. Her hand moves to the back of his neck while her lips make sure he sticks to them. His lips are thin, a little chapped, but oh-so warm and delicious. It has been a long time she had a good kiss like this. A motor deep down starts up with a roar, after what feels like centuries of hibernation. Oh, that's _quite_ lovely, that is.

John stumbles back as the Doctor releases him, bracing her head skywards. He can see where the red dots along the length of her neck recede back to a normal color. A repulsive smog comes from her mouth and releases into the air above. Once it has faded she stumbles just a bit, breathing heavily. John doesn't really know what to say.

"Detox, must do that more often!" She rumbles outright. Although looking like she has been put through the ringer the Doctor's eyes have a new brightness to them. Her pale skin is flushed with life. As she sees first Agatha, looking stunned, then John, she pauses. Her hand swipes the corner of her mouth delicately and the flush from her clavicle travels into her cheeks. "The detox…I mean."

John is also breathing heavily. His head is still kind of light and tingly feeling, but he can't forget the feeling of the Doctor's hands on his cheek and the back of his neck. He is sure he is beet red and he dares say the Doctor is also blushing a bit.

"Doctor," Agatha breaks the tense silence between the two of them. "You are impossible."

The Doctor only offers Agatha a smile and a wink before dashing back into the house, possibly for no reason than to collect herself. Agatha follows, with John at her side.

"So," Agatha begins at the man who still looks gobsmacked. "What was that?"

John lets his jaw remain hanging open for lack of actual answer. Not that he has or hasn't been thinking about kissing the Doctor but…wow. He didn't…never expected…wow! "I, uh…detox…I think?"

"I see," Agatha smiles to herself. She also finds herself a little giddy after those events. It was quite a show, and that was possibly the most _passionate_ display she has seen in a long time. She never kissed her husband so fiercely in all their years together. It is also rather amusing, she decides, to see her new comrade in such a frazzle.

"Come on, then, the guests are taking dinner," the Doctor pops her head around the doorway just to make sure her companions are still with her. "Terribly British, this lot, all to carry on."

"Doctor," John near whispers to capture her attention. Agatha breezes past them, leaving her shrug on a coat rack. The Doctor goes to John's side but takes his arm to lead him in, never stopping.

"John, thank you, and I promise we'll talk, but," the Doctor's pained tone leaves things there as they enter the dining room. John pulls her seat out for her and in again before seating himself. She watches the guests carefully, absorbing every microexpression and gesture made. "So, still taking dinner after two murders?"

"We are British, Doctor," supplies Lady Eddison. "What else must we do?"

"Then, of course, someone tried to poison me," the Doctor ads as nonchalantly as possible, though a few pause to look shocked. John remembers angrily that it was a deliberate attempt on her life. He looks around with a dark, cloudy expression, searching for tells of who would try to kill his Doctor. "It rather gave me an idea though…the poison."

John chokes a bit on his soup, but only for concealing a laugh. Trust the Doctor to drop a bomb like that, he figures. It's too peppery for him anyway. "There pepper in this?"

"Yes, Inspector Smith," the Doctor slides John a sly smile before glancing to the rest of the table again. "The active ingredient in which is piperine. Cute word, isn't it? Piperine is traditionally used as an insecticide."

"Oh, that is cute," John agrees, relieved to feel the hum of excitement in him again. He was worried this adventure would less…adventure-y without it! He glances about the table as well. "Anyone got the shivers?"

The plan to out the beast is for naught when a window bursts open. The candles are doused by the force of the wind and the room is shrouded in shadow. There is a mad scramble over top a buzzing noise. The Doctor is rushed into another room by the same elderly butler as before. John ushers Agatha into the room with them.

"Got you covered Agatha, you've a life to live and books to write," John declares as he grabs a weapon hanging off the wall.

"Well, we know the butler didn't do it," the Doctor offers him a pat on the white-gloved hand gratefully. That's one cliche down but the vespiform has probably made its escape by now. As they rush into the room Roger is dead and the firestone - from around Lady Eddison's neck - is gone. The Doctor leans into John's shoulder from behind with a hand on his side. "Take care of Agatha, I'll sort this out here."

John nods and leads Agatha into the other room, where she needn't see the proceedings. The poor woman looks so frail after what has happened. She has a slight tremor to her, as John takes her by the hand. He sits her down on a chesterfield. "Agatha, this isn't your fault."

"These murders are all being played out in my writing style, how is this not my doing?" Agatha looks to John with sad, glassy eyes.

"I know it seems you are the one to blame but you've done nothing. You haven't even facilitated anything. Your books are works from your own ideas but what a person chooses to do whether by their influence or not is beyond your control." John takes Agatha's hand gently, offering what little comfort he can. "I had a friend, named Jenny. I had the idea that she could come with the Doctor and I…working. The Doctor didn't take too kindly to the idea, though. So, I figured if I could just get the Doctor to open up to Jenny everything would work out. Well, turns out the Doctor wasn't a fan of Jenny because Jenny rather…reminded her of the daughter she lost. In the end, Jenny passed away, and I had opened the Doctor's heart to Jenny only so it could be broken yet again."

"I am so sorry for your loss," Agatha looks to where John kneels before her. "But surely the Doctor doesn't blame you for that."

"No, she never does, and never would," John confesses without satisfaction. "She's just like that, you see. She gives herself to helping people, but in the end, there's nothing left for her. She never bothers to think to help herself. I worry what she would do on her own, if she would remember that she really does need sleep, or that she can't hold her breath underwater for more than five minutes no matter what she says, or that she can't save everyone."

"You love her," Agatha presses gently on John's hand with her own, interrupting his rambling stream of consciousness. "I think that's enough. I've seen the Doctor in action all through today, and I think you have more influence on her than you know."

"That poor footman," the Doctor sighs as she comes back into the room. "Roger's dead and he can't even mourn him. Never mind the 20's, it's like the dark ages. So, what have we found?"

"Every murder is committed because someone wants something," Agatha begins in reasoning. There's no reason to hide the auspicious act of John comforting her, but she feels a little guilty over how she feels about John, despite her camaraderie with both him and the Doctor.

"What does a vespiform want from this lot," the Doctor asks herself as she pops a few more grapes into her mouth from the crystal fruit bowl.

"Doctor, please, the murderer is as human as you or I," Agatha sighs.

"Well," John cringes a little but leaves it at that. When he glances at the Doctor he finds an epiphany. "You're right! We've been so caught up in giant wasps we forgot that you're the expert!"

"I'm not, though, I told you," Agatha chides John discouragingly. "I'm just a purveyor of nonsense."

"No, no, no, no, but plenty of people write detective stories but yours are the best. Why are yours so good, Agatha Christie, because you understand." The Doctor joins Agatha on the seat, leaning forward. "You've lived, you've fought, had your heart broken. You know about people, and their passions—hopes, despairs, anger, all of the tiny things that turn humans - ordinary people - into killers."

"If anyone can solve this, it's you," John takes both Agatha's hands in his, forcing her blue eyes to his brown ones.

Agatha looks between John's large brown eyes to the Doctor's pleading blue ones. These people, so brilliant and so strange, believe in her so highly. She can't understand why for the life of her. Moreover, now the Doctor is speaking as if she isn't even human! Maybe she isn't, Agatha muses; it would explain an awful lot. What is it about this mystery, though? There's the matter of Miss Redmond not being who she says she is, and the Colonel being rather odd in general, and… "John, what did you find upstairs before the giant wasp appeared?"

"It was room Lady Eddison had locked up. Apparently after coming back from India she had Malaria and locked herself up for six months." John sees Agatha and the Doctor share a look of knowing. "What does that mean?"

"A woman only locks herself away for one reason in a world like this." The Doctor purses her lips at John before noshing another grape.

"She was pregnant," Agatha states in agreement. "But Roger isn't old enough to be that child."

"So it was another, from before she met the Colonel," John hypothesizes aloud. "There was an old teddy bear in there, but it was as covered in dust as anything else. Geeves - or whatever his name is - told me the room hadn't been used in forty years."

"Forty years," Agatha ads to the development. "That means Clemency would have been very young when she fell pregnant."

"She would need assistance handling a pregnancy, that young, unwed, in a foreign country," the Doctor concurs.

"Miss Chandrakala," John snaps his fingers, "she would need work to come to this country. What if she met Lady Eddison in India and the Lady brought her back here to help with the pregnancy?"

"Ooh, John, you are brilliant!" the Doctor pats his arm in excitement.

"I daresay we should assemble the suspects again." Agatha stands, smopthing her dress. Her shoulders are held high, with a renewed confidence in them. "This mystery is about to be solved."

"Then we must carry on," the Doctor stands as well, snapping her tongue on the 'r's of 'carry'. "After you, Miss Christie."

"Inspector Smith," Agatha glances at John, who straightens his pinstripes.

"Oh, just John, please," he grins and follows the ladies into the other room. "Ladies and Gentlemen, this endless night has been most foul, but it is coming a close, with the assistance of the brilliant Agatha Christie."

John takes a seat next to the Doctor, who is still eating grapes at a consistent pace. Then again, he thinks, she was poisoned earlier today. On an average day she could ten bunches of the things, he thinks, easily. She also looks noticeably thinner than earlier in the day. Did the cyanide take more of a toll on her than he thought?

"This is a crooked house, full of secrets," Agatha begins looking everyone over. Lady Eddison looks horribly guilty, and Agatha thinks it's rather good they're not playing a game of tells. Instead she turns to Miss Redmond. "The mysterious Miss Redmond, who shows up to a party, playing the belle of the ball, having never met anyone before. I would believe you to be an impostor—that the real Robina Redmond never left London."

"How silly," the young lady sits a little straighter in her chair. "What proof do you have?"

"Earlier, you said you'd been to the toilet," Agatha quirks a humorous brow at the Doctor, who shares in the little joke.

"Oh, if she were actually posh she'd say loo," John proposes with a luxurious tongue, making the Doctor look at him oddly but not without fondness.

"This was below the bathroom window, thrown into a flowerbed." Agatha holds up the lock pick's toolkit. "You must have heard Inspector Smith was searching upstairs so you disposed of the evidence. You're the Unicorn, here with the sole purpose of stealing the firestone."

"Oh, all right then, it's a fair cop," the Unicorn breaks out in a dreadfully rough accent, compared to before. "I nabbed the firestone in the dark, but I didn't bleedin' kill nobody."

"Quite; there are darker motives at work here," Agatha glances at the Colonel briefly as she puts the box down.

"Dammit woman," the Colonel huffs through his moustache, "and your perspicacity."

John's eyebrows nearly meet his hairline as the Colonel stands from his wheelchair decisively. "I did not see that coming."

"At dinner I saw him make to stand before wheeling away," the Doctor mutters into John's ear. "People who are resigned to it don't have the instinct to try and walk."

"How did you discover the truth?" the Colonel blusters at Agatha.

"Um, I didn't actually know," Agatha looks back to John and the Doctor, who shrug simultaneously. "I was going to say you were innocent."

"Oh," the old man deadpans. "Shall I sit, then?"

"I think it would be best," Agatha nods.

"So, he didn't kill 'em?" John asks as he steals one of the Doctor's grapes.

"Indeed not," Agatha looks to him before taking the firestone from where Redmond left it on the table. "This is what we must examine; for more a prize than the Unicorn's intent. A woman who holds this so closely to her heart has more of a reason than money."

"I've done nothing," the Lady tries to deny.

"I am sorry," Agatha offers, "but you had fallen pregnant in India, by the man who gave you this. Your only confidante in the matter came back to this house, a young Miss Chandrakala, and helped you through your 'malaria', isn't that right? You birthed the child in that room that has been sealed off ever since."

"It was no ordinary pregnancy, though," the Doctor finishes a final grape before handing the dish to John (she doesn't expect there to be any left afterwards). "Milady, when the buzzing at dinner began you said 'it can't be' but why?"

"You would never believe me," the Lady whispers.

"The Doctor has opened my mind to believe many impossible things," Agatha sits to hear the story.

"Six impossible things before breakfast," John quotes Lewis Carroll and pops another grape into his mouth.

The Doctor listens patiently to the story. How the Lady Eddison met the vespiform as a human and fell madly in love. They were in love, an alien and a human. And the Lady didn't care that he was a giant wasp?—well, love is blind, the Doctor thinks to herself. She can't help but slip John a sidelong glance. Could a human and galactic form really work as mates? More importantly, why is this heavy a question on her mind now?

"Just like a man. Flashes his family jewels and you end up with a bun in the oven." Miss Unicorn puts ever so eloquently.

'_Just like men indeed, that sums up my marriage on Gallifrey pretty well,_' The Doctor thinks dryly to herself.

"Miss Chandrakala had feared that the Professor had unearthed your secret. She was on her way to warn you."

"So she killed her?" John asks, now just horribly confused.

"No, Lady Eddison is innocent," the Doctor pats John's shoulder. "You did give us a vital clue, though, John, about how this whole thing is acted out like a murder mystery novel. Agatha wrote the books but had no hand in the doing. Who's her biggest fan, though?"

"Lady Eddison?" John looks at the woman who is just as fed up with it all as anyone else.

"Last Thursday night, what were you doing? Reading some good old Agatha Christie? Mulling over how brilliant she is, with her characters and her plots—what a mind she has! What else happened on Thursday, though?" The Doctor angles her body towards the Reverend who speaks slowly, mocking astonishment but choosing his words carefully. "You said on the lawn earlier that some boys broke into your church."

"Yes, horrible, thieves in the night," the Reverend shifts a bit. "But I apprehended them."

"Really, a man of God, against two strong lads? A man in his forties?—or, rather, a man forty years old exactly?" Lady Eddison gasps and the Doctor takes on a collected stance. "Forty years ago Lady Eddison had Miss Chandrakala take her newborn baby to an orphanage. You, Reverend, said yourself that you were taught by the Christian Fathers, i.e., raised in an orphanage. That night, when Lady Eddison, so emotionally distressed on the birthday of her long-lost child, and you, feeling such a deep anger, well that ties into this."

The Doctor holds the firestone up for all to see. "This is a jewel forged from Vespiform shell, giving a link from the shell's body to the bearer. It has a link between your father, and you, to your mother, Lady Eddison. Your mixed feelings from that night broke the genetic lock on your mind, as well as added a dash of good old Poirot himself, didn't it? You can't help but kill in this pattern because that's the linearity of your mind now."

"Come now, this is abzzurd," the Vicar vibrates a bit.

"Oop, having some trouble there, Rev? Bit of buzzing?" the Doctor back John and Agatha up behind her outstretched arm.

"Damn you, humans," the Reverend curses them, still buzzing like a kernel of corn waiting to pop. "And you, how do you stand them, with their sky gods, and their limited minds!"

"Doctor, what's going on?" Agatha looks towards the woman but John only brings her behind him. So…the Doctor isn't human?

"That night, the universe exploded in my mind!" the Reverend is surrounded in a foul purple gas and emerges as a wasp. His buzzing is too loud to bear, over-filling the room.

"No!—no more murder," Agatha commands as she snatches the firestone from the Doctor. "If my imagination made you kill then my imagination will find a way to stop you!"

Agatha rushes past John and the Doctor and out the door. They follow, but arrive at the main entrance only in time to see Agatha in a car. "If I started this then I must be the one to put an end to it!"

"Agatha!" the Doctor shouts but runs to a car herself. She hops in the passenger's seat while John takes the wheel reluctantly. "I can't drive—now go!"

"Spacewoman with a TARDIS and she can't drive," John grumbles as he hits the pedal. They speed off after Agatha and the vespiform. "Where is she going?"

"To the lake, she must want to drown it," says the Doctor.

Sure enough, Agatha's car turns in to Silent Pool lake and stops on the grass. She holds the jewel in her hand and backs up towards the water. "If we're linked then maybe the vespiform will die with me."

"You don't have to do this, Agatha," John pleads with her until the vespiform approaches. He stands in front of Agatha until the Doctor takes grasp of Agatha's head. With her hands on Agatha's temples she closes her eyes. "What're you-"

Agatha and the Vespiform both fall unconscious. The giant wasp falls to the grass with a disturbing crunch of exoskeleton hitting the dirt. Agatha falls limp into the Doctor's embrace, who coos, trying to comfort her. "There, there, Agatha, wherefor seek you down."

"What did you do?" John looks at the Doctor and Agatha with worry and intrigue.

"I put a memory block on her mind. She'll remember nothing of what happened today." The Doctor takes the firestone, disassembling the telepathic link between Agatha and the vespiform with her own. Once it has been broken the jewel shatters into dust in the wind.

"You can do that?" John questions, being more than a little freaked out at the idea.

"Come on, John, we've got to get Agatha out of here." The Doctor nods and is thankful John does as she says without further questions. "Tomorrow, her car will be found by the lake."

"And, let me guess, we'll be taking her to a hotel in Harrogate a few days from now," John finishes for the Doctor, carrying Agatha gingerly. "In our handy dandy mobile police unit?"

"Oh, come off it," the Doctor smiles.

"What about him?" John nods back over his shoulder to the giant wasp.

"His instincts will take over now, and he'll make his way back to his proper galactic sector."

The car ride back to the house is relatively quiet, in the wee hours of the morning. John drives steadily while the Doctor cradles Agatha's head on her lap, stroking her blond hair with care. The sun is breaching the skyline by the time they arrive, with pinks and purples and oranges swirling in the sky above.

"All right, just a few days from now," the Doctor narrates as she goes about setting the TARDIS's controls. John rests Agatha on the jumpseat, careful not to jostle her. Once they've taken off, John making sure Agatha doesn't slump over and onto the floor, he inhales. "Doctor, about the…erm, the detox… "

The Doctor bites her lip anxiously. She was worried about this. How does she go about approaching this? Does she really want to breach that delicate little line between companion and mate again? Her heart still aches for Lee, in a little, dull, throbbing kind of way. Her mind, though, is filled with thoughts of lithe arms holding her back, wild brown hair, eyes the kind of soft brown that they could lull her to sleep. These are all signs that…she is in too deep. This is a dangerous pitfall and she can't afford to surrender to it. Especially not with the newest development…

"We don't have to," John starts with difficulty, "we don't have to talk about it, if you don't want. We don't even…rather, you…I could just…we could forget it…if you prefer."

Agatha stirs as they land and the two tend to her for the moment. John lifts her into his arms and out the door. Once she is half awake the Doctor places a single hand on Agatha's temple and the blond woman snaps awake. She stumbles forward, toward the doors of the Harrogate Hotel, confused. When she looks back, all she sees is a red haired woman on the arm of a man in brown pinstripes. She carries on.

"What about Lady Eddison and all of them?" asks John.

"Shameful story, won't bother gossiping, too British for that," the Doctor mumbles as the warmth of the sun comes through the trees. She turns to John, now, fully. "John, it's not that I want to forget it."

"Is it Lee?" John asks very carefully. It's not hard to tell the Doctor's feelings for her first companion, as much as it pains him to think of it.

"No, actually," the Doctor smiles as John moves surreptitiously closer. She feels the warmth of his chest on her face (can even hear the beating of his single heart, if she concentrates). The sun spots through the tree canopy dances over the pinstripes. When she looks up at John she sees warmth, patience, anticipation but overall acceptance, which is what makes her melt into him. Her lips beckon his to them rather than taking them. He seems all too willing to oblige, as his arms find her waist. It's a simple kiss, neither dull nor passionate, nor heated nor brief. It's a sweet, plain kiss with nothing but a promise held within. When they break apart the Doctor smiles at him, hoping that what needed to be conveyed has been. His smile tells her all she needs to know. She takes his hand in hers, intertwining their fingers, "allons-y?"


	9. Silence in the Library

"Books!" John declares loudly as he all but charges out of the TARDIS. He holds his arms out as if running to hug a friend he hasn't seen in ages. "Downloads, and ebooks, and kindles and kobos but nothing compares to the smell of old books!"

"Library voice, Red-Fish-Blue-Fish," the Doctor shuts the TARDIS door behind her. This section of The Library seems quiet, with no noise but John's fanboy moment. He can be such a geek sometimes, and she loves that. "This Library is an entire planet of books! There are continents worth of everything ever written."

"Everything written ever," John purses his lips a bit and nods. He walks just as slowly as the Doctor does, trying not to tread on thin ice. The Library wasn't really a scheduled stop, but the Doctor had declared it their destination that morning. It wasn't entirely unusual of her to be spontaneous in that manner, but with a destination like this, John could guess there was business to attend to.

"It's a collection, physical and digital, managed by the biggest processor ever created," the Doctor ascends some stairs and turns the corner into the main lobby. She does have a reason for coming here, in on which she may or may not have let poor John.

The desk is unattended, and the only movement in the area is the dust floating where the light filters through skylights.

"So, um," John starts clenching and unclenching his fists as he approaches the Doctor. He tries to approach the matter with delicacy. "Do you want me to go with you, or should I just, uh, meander off to…science fiction town?"

"You'd have to take a transport to science fiction, actually," the Doctor looks around as if it makes a difference. "And, no, I…I want you with me for this."

"You still haven't really explained what we're doing here anyway." John tries not to question the Doctor in excess as she leads him into another section of The Library. She has been more withdrawn than normal lately, which wouldn't be such a worry, but John thought they were making headway in their relationship. She had been talking more—saying more, that is, and showing him how to fly the TARDIS. She had even shared that she had a nickname back on Gallifrey, but then it just stopped. The sharing, and openness, it tribbled out and she was just spouting facts at him again.

"The thing is, John, I should speak with Lee, but more importantly I have to hack into the data core. The main processor might have the information I need." The Doctor walks alone, hands stuffed into her coat pockets. As unsettling as John finds it to be walking without her hand in his she finds it possibly more disturbing. "Something weird is happening, and we need to find out why."

"What do you mean something weird?"

"John, Lee is in the data core of The Library, permanently stored in the hard drive. He's a data fragment." The Doctor looks at John solidly, to emphasize that she wants him to know this. "We met here, in the 51st century. I was passing through, you know, and ended up dragging Lee with me to fight the Daleks. Long story short, Lee ended up integrated into the coding of The Library's mainframe. After all the worlds I'd shown him and realities we had saved he had to be stored in the virtual reality in The Library's processor. I pulled him through reality, across dimensions, showed him the stars…and now… Now, he is a string of data code."

John watches the Doctor carefully. Her eyes are glittery with emotion but there's a hardness to them that seems to embody her strength. "When you first mentioned him…you said he wasn't human anymore."

"Lee can't exist outside of the mainframe. I designed him a signature code and custom code sequence." The Doctor looks down, now, nudging some books out of her path with her foot. "I made him the perfect life, where it's always good fishing weather, got rid of his stutter—he always hated it. I…I hoped he would…maybe he could have a family in there."

John has so many questions he wants to ask. He can't, though, because…he just can't. There is so much hiding behind that statement, as well as all her others. This one, though, speaks to him. He wonders if Lee knew the Doctor loved him. Lee certainly loved her but did he want too much?—if he had a relatively normal life? The Doctor said Lee wanted a family, but does that mean she didn't want one? Or was it that she couldn't have a family with a human? "What do you mean you designed him a signature code?"

"I constructed him a unique digital signature so I could keep track of him, in case something ever went wrong." The Doctor pulls out the Sonic and waves it a bit. "That's why we're here."

"What's wrong?" John looks around for a second. "Does it have something to do with how empty it is around here?"

"I noticed that too, and I think so, yes," the Doctor mutters. She goes to the computer console by the desk, pulling out her glasses.

"Um, Doctor," John begins with tight breathing, "why does that statue have a face?"

"Oh, never mind him, it's like donating a park bench or a plaque to a community theater." The Doctor frowns at the screen, quirking her lips. "This is strange."

"Oh, I can guess any number of things," John shudders, being stared down by the statue's face, "but what in particular?"

"If I search humanoids, I get you and I, and that's it," the Doctor begins, "but broaden the search, and it taps out at a million, million."

"A million, million," John stares, having never seen a number like that, "of what?"

"Warning: The Library has been breached," says the statue. "Run for God's sake run. Count the shadows, if you want to live. Warning: The-"

"All right, we got it, shut your trap," the Doctor snaps at the emotionless face. She puts her glasses back in her coat and brings John closer to her. "John, I want you to stay very close to me."

"Doctor," John calls her attention to a shadow that has crept into the light. "That shadow wasn't there before."

"We have to get back to the TARDIS. That shadow isn't a shadow." The Doctor pulls out the Sonic, but it instantly starts blinking at her. "I'm getting some interference."

"Hello, darling!"

A man with grey hair walks in. He wears a proper, grey suit, which accents his peppery hair. There's a distinct swagger to his gait, which helps him with the whole distinguished look he's got going on. He looks a bit like Caecilius, John thinks. That thought dissolves quickly as the stranger comes up to the Doctor and hugs her tightly. His arms wrap around her in unbridled affection as he lays a kiss to her temple.

"Oi, hands!" the Doctor snaps at him, slapping his hands off of her form. "Who the hell are you?!"

"I'm the Doctor," the silver haired gentleman greets with a smile.

"You're not the Doctor, she's the Doctor," John rushes briskly, absolutely seething at how this man dares, well, _anything_ with his Doctor. The way he looks at her, the way he talks to her, even the way he stands bugs John.

"Oh, she's a Doctor, all right, but I'm _the _Doctor," the stranger disputes with a sporting tone. "The Twelfth, by the way."

"Look, Twelve, I don't have time to deal with you, so just turn around and go back to your ship-"

"TARDIS," says Twelve, startling the Doctor and John. "I have a TARDIS, and you know that, too. That's the interference you're getting on the Sonic. Of course, if it had a red setting, like mine, it wouldn't."

The Doctor looks at the Sonic - Screwdriver, it looks like - this twit is waving in her face offensively. She snatches it out of his hand without reservation. It's a thick, chunky, clinkety-clunkety thing. Sure enough, the light on its end is red, and it even has dampers! "What the hell…?!"

"Sonic Screwdriver," says Twelve, taking it from her without anger and putting it back in his suit pocket. "Don't get me wrong, I like your Sonic too, it's…sleek."

"Okay, how do you have a TARDIS?" John asks, desperately trying to insert himself between Twelve and the Doctor.

"Well, it's not really the genuine article; more of an alternate replica. You see, I am from a reality that got wedged between this reality and a another one; a friction pocket out of sync with time and space."

The Doctor measures the mysterious interloper with scrutiny. He doesn't seem threatening, and if anything, overly friendly with her. "Who are you?—and how do you know me?"

"Doctor," John takes her hand tightly. He points to the hallway through which they came, where the lights go out one by one. It's like watching a tidal wave of darkness approach.

"Run!" the Doctor gets an iron grip on John's hand and takes off. Twelve is running with them, being thoroughly ignored.

"It's locked!" John rattles the brass door handles of an untouched room.

"It's wood, I can't Sonic it!" declares Twelve.

"Oh, back up, you gits," the Doctor pushes them both away just to kick the doors in. Twelve seals the door behind them while John follows her into the lit center of the room. "If you're so great then how come your Sonic can't do wood either?"

"I know, it—it really is embarrassing," Twelve pulls at his ear.

"Doctor, what was that?" John asks in close proximity to her.

"That darkness wasn't just a shadow, it was a swarm." The Doctor takes John's hand - to the unseen chagrin of Twelve - and leads him to the edge of the darkness, where she Sonics it. "It's not darkness, we fear, but what's in the darkness. It's Vashta Nerada."

"The piranhas of the air," Twelve steps up to them while pulling out his own dark rimmed glasses. "They'll melt the flesh off bone in the time it takes you to blink."

The Doctor pauses maybe all of a second and a half before squeezing John's hand. "John, come with me."

"Doctor, where are we going?" John asks but doesn't resist.

"That little shop is always by the exit so they can sell you stuff," the Doctor mutters to herself as she runs. Sure enough there's a teleport pad onto which she all but throws John. "I'm beaming you back to the TARDIS; if I'm not back in five hours an emergency protocol will activate and take you home."

"Doctor, I'm not leaving you here, and certainly not with him!"

"John, I am not going to argue on this! I have seen what those things can do and I will not let that happen to you! I will not watch that happen to you—not you!"

John tries to jump from the teleport but the Doctor beats him to it. She holds him there, tilting her head up and fusing her lips to his. He holds her head, kissing back with a sad desperation on his lips. The warmth she provides only makes the cold fear in him scarier.

The Doctor feels tears collect in her eyelashes as John's touch leaves her. She pulls back and there are only a few particles of light left. In a few forceful blinks her tears divide into her lashes, freeing her vision. The Doctor takes a few deep breaths to calm herself; with John safe maybe she can at least focus enough to find CAL.

"With me, Sunshine!" Twelve shouts for her.

"Look here, you," the Doctor approaches and glares at Twelve. He seems eager but instead of whatever he was expecting he gets a slap in the face.

"You haven't done that to me in a long time," Twelve laughs with a kind of dreamy smile. "I've kind of missed it."

"Okay, sicko, you've made it clear you know me-"

"I know you better than you know yourself," Twelve chirps. "I know you were sent home from kindergarten for biting, I know your favorite author is Agatha Christie, I know you love grapes but hate pears, and I even know about that little spot behind your left ear I-"

"Oi!" the Doctor interrupts Twelve as he reaches behind his own left ear with a sneaky smile. Her affronted pout does nothing to convey her irritation with him. There's only one thing to know about the back of her left ear and it's nothing to discuss in the open air. "All right, you know me, but you haven't explained how!"

"Spoilers," Twelve takes on a softer, deep tone. His accent is rough, like a Scottish accent wrapped inside an English one.

"Spoilers," the Doctor mocks; "I'm a time traveler. I point and laugh at spoilers."

"I know you're a time traveler, because I am too." Twelve leans a little closer to the Doctor, who, much to her own surprise, doesn't tense at all. "I can't tell you how, but you do know me. I am someone you trust with your life, and I trust you with mine. That's in another universe, though, and it is in danger. This, mine, and a lot of other universes are in danger, and I've been rocketed here by temporal waves in hopes of correcting that. So, I need you and your brilliance here and now."

"Give me one good reason to trust you," the Doctor dares him coldly.

"Donna!" Twelve snaps. The fearful look on the Doctor's face tells him he has made his point. "That's your name: Donna."

"It's a crude, earthen translation of sorts," she glares at him, still defiant but at least not angry.

"Well, the you I know, is named Donna. You're brilliant, and amazing and the most important woman in the whole wide universe—in _my_ universe." Twelve looks the Doctor dead in the eyes, and she sees something. There is the same haunted, darkness in his pale blue eyes as in her oceanic ones. "I am the Doctor, and I have been pulled through realities and dimensions to save you."

"I don't need saving," the Doctor breaks contact with the stranger - albeit handsome - with a scoff. "I need to get to the data core of this planet."

"How do you expect to do that with swarms everywhere? There's no other flesh source to divert them and I'm not going to let you run headlong into danger alone!" Twelve shouts after the woman who was already running off before he started speaking. "Why do you need the data core, anyway?"

"You've been torn through realities, you know the dangers," she huffs at him. "I got a signal from a friend here saying there was danger. If realities are ripping here as well then I have to stop them."

"They're linked to your friend," Twelve frowns deeply. "You have companions, then, that you travel with?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but yeah, what of it," she growls.

"This companion here, at The Library, his name is Lee, isn't it?—Lee McAvoy," Twelve proposes. The Doctor stops dead in her tracks, nearly making him crash into her back. She's upset with him enough as is. "You met him in The Library, where the world is wrong and time is disjointed."

"Lee is integrated with the software here, now. I need to find CAL so I can contact him." The Doctor continues running again. She turns down a glass walled corridor, that stands miles over the city of books. "If you know so much about my timeline here then why haven't you done anything about it already?"

"My timeline got misaligned as soon as my universe began degrading," answers Twelve. "Mine and every other universe is in danger."

"But what from?" the Doctor turns, exasperated. "What could endanger every universe?"

"Donna," Twelve takes on a very serious tone. However, he doesn't get a chance as a rustling attracts their attention. "What was that?"

"We're the only life forms here," the Doctor frowns. She and Twelve look towards the end of the corridor, squinting in the darkness. The rustling is heard again and a whiteness appears. It looks like a body, staggering out of the shadows. "That's impossible."

"Someone was here," Twelve pulls out his Sonic.

"And now they've got him," the Doctor concurs, pulling out her own. The light remains dim and she feels dread shoot through her bones. "John's not in the TARDIS."

"What?"

"I should have gotten a signal." The Doctor hardly gives Twelve a second thought - he's got a Sonic Screwdriver! - and runs back. She runs under the dimming lamps, slightly uncaring of the shadows near literally nipping at her ankles. Finally she sees a node statue. "You!—John Smith, locate him, now!"

"John Smith has left the library."

The Doctor stumbles back from the device, now wearing a poor counterfeit of John's likeness. The blood drains from her face and ice fills her hearts. It can't be; there's only one reason for this to happen. "No, John, don't tell me… "

"John Smith has been saved."

Her worst nightmare, the Doctor thinks, might have been this happening. John isn't back in Chiswick, he's not in the shadows, he's not safe, he's not anywhere. John Smith has been saved. Those five words, repeated like a death chime, kill her. Of all the things to happen to him—of all the ways for her to lose him this one scares her the most. She didn't fear this the most but it scares her more than anything else because if this is real then she has lost two of her loved ones to a reality she can't reach.

I might never see John again, the deepest corner of her mind whispers to her so loudly she can't ignore it. I can talk to Lee but I designed him a signature code to reach. John will just be reduced to numbers. I'll never see him again; never hear his voice. I'll never hear him say "allons-y" ever again.

"Donna!" Twelve takes her by the shoulders and leads her through a side hall.

"That was John," she whispers as if remembering a nightmare.

"I know, but you've got to stay with me," Twelve grunts as he continues to lead her forcefully. "Tell me what CAL is."

"CAL is the data core of The Library," the Doctor murmurs in a detached manner.

"All right, core means center, so we need this," Twelve leads them into another circular room and seals it behind him. The symbol iconic of The Library is emblazoned on the floor, which he Sonics. "Gravity lift; let's just reverse your polarity."

"John was saved," the Doctor says again. No tears appear, no breaks in her voice emerge, she just says it. She affirms that this reality, the worst possible one, is happening.

"What do you mean, what does that mean? Isn't John safe a good thing?" Twelve notices the Doctor's catatonic state and grasps her shoulders tightly. "Doctor, you've lost your friend-"

"My Earthboy," she whispers with a bit of emotion starting to leak through again.

"But I need you to focus. John is somewhere, he's safe-"

"No, he's saved," the Doctor pushes Twelve away slightly, but leaves her hand on his chest. "The computer has saved John on the mainframe. He's been coded into the interface."

"Saved means saved, on a computer," Twelve nods in realization, "not safe. So, how do we get him out?"

"I don't know if we can." The Doctor's stare remains hollow, but tone returns to her voice. "I couldn't extrapolate Lee from the mainframe cleanly and that's why he's here. He's saved as data, here."

"If we can get to the mainframe I promise we will get John back," Twelve kneels as the Doctor slumps onto a stack of books. He looks in her eyes and moves his hand slowly. When she shows no retaliation he places it on hers, gingerly. "I need you, though, right now. I can't do this on my own."

"Sure you can, you've got a Sonic, you're," the Doctor holds up her fingers to mimic quotation marks, "_the Doctor_, you'll manage."

"No, Donna, because I'm nothing without my companion, and you are my companion, for all of space and time: forever. That's what you promised me, Donna: forever. I lost you, in my reality, so I tried to find a way to correct it. That's how I learned the universes are tearing. I traveled across universes to try and bring you back to me but something went wrong in another reality, in another timeline. I lost you and…well, you know very well how rubbish I am without you."

The Doctor manages to laugh a little at that. Figures, she muses, no matter what world you're in a bloke is nothing without his woman. Or her Earthboy, her mind ads sadly, much to her own agony. "I have to get to CAL. There's a chance of getting John back, if I can get directly to CAL and reverse the immersion processor."

"All right, then," Twelve gives her hand a little squeeze and stands again.

"Wait," the Doctor stops him. He gives her his attention, patiently. "You have two heartbeats, like me."

"You really are the Doctor Donna," Twelve smiles adoringly. "I'm from Gallifrey. I took the name the Doctor because I travel through time and space: saving civilizations, fighting terrible creatures, running an awful lot—you said that."

"Who am I in your world?"

"You're my companion," Twelve avoids eye contact and it's a dead giveaway.

"Who am I to you?" the Doctor presses. Twelve takes her hand again, forcing her to look him in the eye, long and hard. She feels a warm flood of thoughts enter her mind. It's not invasive, but like his thoughts hugging hers. The tingle of shared telepathy brings light to her eyes. The same golden light in her eyes appears in his and she gasps. "I-I know you—Theta?"

"Theta Sigma," Twelve smiles a little tiredly, "a crude, earthen translation of sorts."

"That's why you know me, we…" the Doctor lets the statement end there. Twelve keeps her hand in his but brushes her hair from her cheek. She feels torn. This man, her…he knows her, and she knows him, in a way she never thought she would anyone since Gallifrey. John, though…then there's John. "Am I human in your world?"

"Not anymore," Twelve shakes his head. "A lot of spoilers, but, one word: metacrisis."

"Damn," the Doctor mutters, knowing full well what that means. "Okay, so how can we fix this, then? How did you lose me?"

"I…don't really want to revisit that," Twelve looks down in pain. "Besides, it's not in flux anymore, it can't be rewritten. We just have to figure out how to stabilize this reality. The realities surrounding this one are tearing but maybe that chain can be broken here, with us."

"All right, let's get to CAL," the Doctor stands with a new fire of determination.

"After you, Milady," Twelve allows the Doctor to jump ahead of him. He lands a few seconds after her, in what looks like a basement of sorts. "Is this the main computer?"

"This is where I can link up to CAL." The Doctor Sonics the console's panel off and begins fiddling with wires. "I can converse with Lee, see what's going on."

"Are you going to link up with the processor? Won't you be in danger of being coded yourself?" Twelve starts to protest until he sees what she's doing. As she continues to install the Sonic into the computer, linking it with the processor he nods. "So, here's a question: how did you leave it, you and Lee?"

"I used the teleport to bypass his physical download and keep his consciousness more in tact during the encoding process."

"No, I mean," Twelve tugs on his right ear again. "Did you tell him you loved him?"

The Doctor halts in her ministrations. "No, I didn't."

As her hand slips down the Sonic a flickering appears. A flash of John's face is projected but aside from that the Doctor feels a tug in her mind. It's the mental equivalent of a hand pulling at her sleeve.

_Doctor, is that you?_

_Yes, John!—where are you?_ The Doctor thinks frantically.

_I don't know_.

Then, like that, the connection is gone.

"Donna, what just happened?" asks Twelve.

"It was John, in my mind, he contacted me, but I don't know how. It means he hasn't been encoded, he's just…existing. He's conscious—he's got conscious thought!" The Doctor begins a new sequence of actions, detaching some wires from the Sonic and holding them in her teeth.

"You better not be thinking what I think you are," Twelve warns her.

"If John can reach my thoughts with his then we still have a connection and John hasn't be integrated with the programming. If I go in there in person using our connection as a link maybe I can pull him out myself."

"You could also end up programmed in there yourself!" Twelve takes the Doctor's hands in his aggressively.

"Let me go!" the Doctor fights him but he's much stronger than her. He holds her wrists, not roughly, but with the strength she knows could break her bones if she fights too hard.

"I will not let you do this," Twelve persists. "If you get stuck in that mainframe and I can't get you out there will be no hope, for anyone."

"You can extract anything you need from the data core with your own Sonic, you can transport, you can leave, you can do whatever you want, but I'm going in there!" The Doctor shouts back in Twelve's face.

"No, you're not, because I won't let you. If you go in there and don't come out it could very well mean the world's end." Twelve moves the Doctor away and plucks the Sonic from the console. Using one hand to restrain her he slips his own Sonic in the place of hers. "You don't have a chance of extracting yourself and you can't regenerate in there, meaning you could be deleted from every existence—every universe!"

"You have no more of a chance than I do and I'm going!"

"Sh," Twelve presses a kiss to her forehead. His breath is ragged, torn up by feeling. "You know my name and I know yours. You know what that means and you know that's why you have to trust me."

"Let me do this!" the Doctor continues to fight against Twelve's grip, but it's like cast iron. She would have to rip her hands off to escape him.

"It's not your time, Donna," Twelve activates his Sonic Screwdriver with one hand. With the other he draw's the Doctor hands in, kissing both. "You'll see me again."

The Doctor panics as Twelve's hands dissipate from around her wrists. The screen registers the transfer of data and flickers. The Doctor frowns; 4024 saved. John and Twelve are two but… "Oh!—no, you have all of them, don't you? That's where everyone is! You have them!"

"Stop shouting; please, stop shouting."

The Doctor startles from the voice, but obeys. "I-I'm sorry, I really am."

"Have to…I have to save."

The Doctor wanders toward the voice. She flips the switch and the steel doors retract. She gasps as she comes face to artificial-face with a girl. It's just a little girl, hooked up to the largest mainframe in the history of existence. "Hello, there, sweetheart. Are you CAL?"

"Charlotte Abigail Lux," the face's voice, tinny and hollow, answers to the reference.

"You saved them," the Doctor smiles at the girl, who smiles back. "You saved everyone in The Library, Charlotte. You saved them all."

"Save…I have to save."

"You did it, honey," the Doctor lets her fingers ghost over the cold cheek. The girl smiles. She's just a little girl, the Doctor thinks. She has 4025 voices in her mind, saved; that's such a big burden for just a little girl. "You have my friends in there."

"John Smith has been saved," says Charlotte.

"I need him back, Charlotte," the Doctor bites her lip a little. "I need my Earthboy."

"John Smith has been saved," Charlotte repeats, unable to do anything else.

"Charlotte, you need to let them go, darling. You need to let me take them out of there." The Doctor gives Charlotte another smile she hopes is comforting before going back to the main computer. "I can help you, Charlotte, but you are letting them go. They can be restored; 4024 of them can be restored."

"Lee McAvoy has been saved."

The Doctor frowns a little at Charlotte, who doesn't seem anymore happy about it. "I know…I can't get him back…but I can help the others."

"Have to save," Charlotte echoes.

"I know," the Doctor nods and takes a definitive stance at the computer.

"Allons-y."


	10. The Forest of the Dead

John sits at the front desk unhappily. He taps his pen, waiting for something, or anything, to happen. It never does, though. He just keeps his eye on the clock, even though it never moves. That's weird, right? He doesn't really care anymore, not really, that is. Same old life, after all, just with clocks that don't work.

A woman walks in, all fiery hair splayed over her shoulders. She's wearing a black blazer over her blue shirt and black skirt. There's a funky kind of pen or something in her inside pocket but John can't see it well enough. With a flip of the auburn locks over her shoulder she looks at him. Her eyes are a stunning blue, with the slightest hint of another color around the pupils. "Um, hello?—can I have my mail, please?"

"Oh!" John flushes guiltily at being caught staring. He rifles through the mess on his desk. "I-I'm so sorry, um, could I have your name, please?"

"Oh, you're the new temp," the woman smiles an alleviating little smirk. "I'm Nellie—Nellie Bertram."

"Ah, yes, Miss Bertram," John smiles at the woman, who now seems awfully familiar to him. Maybe it's her hair - but he doesn't know anyone here, yet - or her eyes. Perhaps she looks like a celebrity; she's certainly beautiful in that glamorous kind of way. As she takes the mail, though, he sees that fancy pen in her inside pocket again. It's a funky looking doodad, with a light on the top of it. Is it a pen or a high-tech lipstick?

Nellie looks to where John's looking but there's nothing inside her pocket. "Something wrong, Mister Smith?"

"Oh, no, um, call me John, please," he corrects in a distanced tone. "Sorry, I'm just, uh, distracted lately, I guess."

"This place can do that," Nellie nods to the side before her eyes turn a gold-ish color. "The Library is silent."

John feels his mind pound as if an explosion were pressing against the insides of his skull. He holds his head but his mind's eye sees The Library. He remembers being in The Library, and being with the Doctor. The Doctor, he notes, who has bright red hair and blue-gold eyes. He looks up at Nellie, whose eyes are still glowing gold, through his fog of pain. "Doctor, is that you?"

"Yes, John!—where are you?" Nellie's lips move but he only hears the Doctor's voice in his head.

"I don't know," he mutters before falling to the ground. The world shifts under him, body curled in pain. The ground seems to rip away from itself, and soon John feels like he's floating. It's like he's in space, he labors over the thought through his blinding headache. No, this is unlike anything he has ever felt before. It's like there's another mind inside his head. That was the Doctor's voice, though, he remembers.

"Clear the way, I'm the Doctor."

John looks up, shaking, expecting to find orange hair and blue eyes. Instead he sees a man with grey hair and glasses, telling John to take them out of here. He's a nutter, John thinks to himself, wherever he came from.

"The Library, John, remember The Library, and the Doctor."

John blinks away his migraine, rubbing at his eyes. He's still John, still working as a temp. He transferred to…here? Where is here?

"John, are you feeling better?" Nellie asks him. "That migraine looked absolutely wretched. I used to get those when I was a kid."

"Yeah, I'm feeling better, thanks," he smiles at his new friend. "What…what exactly happened?"

"Oh, well, you collapsed, then a Doctor came and sent you home for the day."

The Doctor, John thinks to himself. He's supposed to remember something. "What did…what was her name?"

"Her," Nellie frowns at John; "it was a man, called himself Doctor Dodici, I think. He seemed to know you."

"Did he say anything to me?" John looks intently at Nellie, who seems to have just as much trouble remembering as he does. In a small way, he's comforted, but in another he also finds it even more disconcerting.

Nellie's eyes become a golden hue as she turns to John. "The world is wrong."

"What?" John remembers those words. He knows what they mean yet is endlessly confused by them. "What does that mean?"

"Time is in flux," Nellie's lips continue to move with no sound but the Doctor's voice channeling directly into John's mind. "The Library is Silent; the world is wrong."

John remembers the Doctor's words, in the voice that wisps through his mind like a cooling breeze. When he looks at Nellie again her eyes have returned to normal and she's looking at him with a soft, fond expression. "What?—what is it?"

"There you go with that look again," Nellie smiles a little when the man looks sheepish. "Who is it I remind you of?—a girl?"

John rubs the back of his neck sheepishly at Nellie's inquisitiveness. "I, uh, yeah, you could say that."

"Ooh, well, she must have been sommin' else," Nellie chuckles. When John looks sad again she melts. "You see her when you look at me?"

"Kind of," John runs his fingers along the bench—how did they get to the park? The wood under his fingers is rough, as if it's composed of a bunch of bumps. "I guess you could say it like that."

"I had a man," Nellie nods vaguely, "broke my heart. Then there was another man…whose heart I broke. I miss both of them, differently, but miss them all the same."

"You have your son," John offers. He can't think of why, but his heart aches for a daughter he never actually had.

"Yes, and he has an unloved ball of crazy of a mother," Nellie laughs deprecatingly.

"You're brilliant," John corrects his friend.

_You're brilliant._

John frowns suddenly. This barrage on his mind is different. There's no blinding pain or unbearable heat, just an echoing in his head. The Doctor's voice - whoever she is - is still in his head. He can still hear her voice, hear her calling him brilliant and…Earthboy?

"You're brilliant," Nellie, golden eyed, speaks in the Doctor's familiarly affectionate voice. "John, you're brilliant."

"Doctor, I don't know what to do," John whispers, feeling the same cold fear that crept inside of him when he was teleported from The Library. "Doctor, how do I get back to The Library?"

"John, you're in The Library," the Doctor says through Nellie's eyes.

"I know, but I need to get back to you!" John raises his voice.

"There you are, John!"

John frowns as a man sits himself on the park bench. What is he doing there? Why are either of them there? What happened to the woman?—she had a son! "Who are you?"

"I'm Twelve," the man - isn't that the Doctor he saw the other day? - smiles at John understandingly. "I know there's a lot to adjust to, in here, John, but you have to resist it. If you accept this world you'll be fully integrated. That's what happened to Lee."

Lee, John thinks, he knows that name. He remembers the name Lee McAvoy and why he doesn't have a face to match to it. "How did it happen?"

"I saw into the data core," says Twelve, still acting as cool as a cucumber. "The Doctor and Lee got coded in here, but as soon as Lee accepted the world in here his integration was finalized. That's why he can't exist outside of The Library anymore."

"Lee is in The Library," John whispers to himself. Visions flash through his mind. The Doctor, sad, talking about Lee. There's a ridiculous amount of running.

"John, you know this place is wrong; this world is wrong. You have to remember that, keep remembering the Doctor. If you ever want to get back to her, and see her again, you remember that this world is wrong." Twelve leans in close with John, to discuss his conspiracy intensely. "Time is wrong in here, John. This world is wrong."

"The world is wrong," John affirms. He remembers waiting for The Doctor. "I need the Doctor."

"I know, John, just remember."

"John," Nellie pats John's cheek, frightened at how still he has gone in thought. "John, what are you thinking?"

John looks at Nellie with tears in his eyes. His heart is pounding with pain and he doesn't know why. He takes her hand, soft against his stubbly cheek, in need of warmth. She grants him that, looking confused and anxious. "Sorry, I just…zoned out there, huh?"

"Yeah," Nellie says in a voice that is familiar but of her own volition. "John…where is the Doctor?"

"The Doctor," John inhales sharply. "She…she's in The Library. I have to find her."

"You lost her before," Nellie states rather than asks. "You waited for her?"

"Yeah, I did," John frowns as the memories of the year that never was dawn on him. He remembers a rip in time, and waiting. "I waited a whole year just to try and see her again."

"You loved her," says Nellie, softly, letting the words travel on the wind and into his ear.

"I love her," John repeats. He has so little mental capacity at the moment he doesn't know what else he can do. "I waited…I would wait for her. I would wait a thousand years for her."

"I love that song," Nellie declares next to John on the plane. She settles her purse below her seat and crosses her legs. "If a bloke sang that song to me I'd be his, just like that."

John looks around the plane, trying not to look manic. "Where are we…going?"

"Scranton," Nellie bounces her ticket anxiously in her hand against her thigh. "For my reunion with my old office mates."

"Right, you-you're right, of course, sorry," John shakes his head, hoping it will clarify something. If anything it has an etchesketch effect and makes his thoughts even muddier.

"John, are you all right?" Nellie asks in the cab. "You can just stay at the hotel, with Drake, and I can go alone."

"No, it's fine," John frowns, bouncing the toddler on his knee. There are questions in his head, but somehow he resists the urge to ask them. They were on a plane, then they landed, got in a cab, and now he and baby…something, are going to a wedding party. "What's his name?"

"Toby," Nellie introduces John to a slim, sandy haired man. Her hand lingers on his arm, and John smiles. "This is my friend John; he's a temp."

"You're not just a temp, though."

John glances to his right to find Twelve sitting next to him, sipping Champagne. To his left, a woman is holding a toddler, a little boy. He looks up to see Nellie dancing with a man. Nellie Bertram: she is his friend. He looks back at the man. "What's going on?"

"Time is going to fluctuate the more progress the Doctor makes in finding you and extrapolating everyone. That's why The Library was empty, John, because everyone was saved to the mainframe." Twelve swirls his champagne a little. "The Vashta Nerada appeared in The Library and, when everyone tried to teleport, the processor took them all and saved them as data signatures. That's what we are, right now."

"But we're real," John presses, gauging Twelve's face. He seems hesitant. "I'm real, you're real; Nellie is real!"

"I'm sorry, John, I can't guarantee that," Twelve winces.

"Nellie is real and so is her son!" John hisses at Twelve quietly, so as not to alert anyone to their conversation. He doesn't want to upset anyone, least of all Nellie, who is dancing with…who is that man?!

"John, the world is still wrong, and I don't know who's real and who's not," Twelve argues in an equally subdued tone. "I can say that you've held up well. You need to keep that up; keep remembering. Keep in mind that time flows differently in here. When you suddenly find yourself somewhere, somewhen else, continue to question it."

"John, are you all right?"

John looks up from where he sleeps on Nellie's couch. When he looks at his old - new(?) - friend he smiles sadly. Time has passed, but not correctly, he reminds himself. She looks older, but beautifully so. He bets this is what the Doctor would look like if she aged. Wait, the Doctor doesn't age. She's…she's from another world. She's from Gallifrey!

"Earthboy," Nellie calls mentally at John, eyes glowing. "Earthboy, can you hear me?"

"Doctor!" John shouts. He holds Nellie's face delicately, trying to take care through his panic. "Doctor, help, tell me what to do!"

"I'm coming for you!" Nellie mouths without expression.

"Doctor, don't leave me! Please, don't leave me again!" John pleads tearfully.

"John, I'm coming for you! I promise I'll find you!"

John wakes up in a cold sweat, looking around his dark, sad little bachelor pad. It has been months since he last saw Nellie—no, no, it has been seconds, that's all. John takes a deep breath and puts a hand to his heart. "Seconds…it's only seconds."

"Are you all right, John?"

When he looks up he sees a sad, tired version of his friend. She looks broken, with eyes so hollow it breaks his heart. This world is still wrong, but she's real, right? She has to be, John thinks, his best friend has to be real. Nellie is his best friend, who has a son… John runs a hand through his hair. This world is wrong, and it's breaking. Months passed within a few seconds and Nellie's son dissipated from the world. How could this place be so cruel, though? How could it rip a child from his mother? "I'm fine, Nell, what about you?"

The red haired woman shrugs heavily. "John, why is this happening?"

"I don't know," John stands and runs his hands down the woman's arms.

"Time isn't right," Nellie murmurs, and John smiles, albeit sadly. Of course she would figure it out. "Is that why he's gone?"

"I don't know, Nell, but I hope you get him back," John presses a kiss to Nellie's forehead and holds her tightly.

"John," Nellie's eyes turn golden for the first time in both a long and short time. "John, you're in the data core."

"Doctor, tell me what's happening," John whispers with his forehead against Nellie's.

"John, I've found the sequencing and I'm going to reverse the immersion process." Says the Doctor through Nellie. "Just hold on."

"John," Nellie's voice is fragile, but her own again. She looks at her friend's sad, wide brown eyes. "John, this place is wrong."

"I know," he whispers to her.

"This world…it isn't real, is it?" Tears stream down Nellie's cheeks.

"No, it isn't," John wipes them away delicately.

"Was he real?" Nellie asks, and John smiles, because she was always a wonderful mother, looking out for her son foremost.

"I know he was, Nell," John feels himself start to cry as well.

"Am I real?"

John chokes on a sob as he looks into his best friend's eyes. "You're as real as anything." Light begins to fill his vision. He remembers this light and knows that it's time to go back to The Library. "I know you're real, Nellie. I'll find you, okay? I promise I'll find you, and your son."

"John, it's time."

When John turns he sees Twelve standing there. Everything is white, but it's not nothing yet. There's a wind, blowing around like a vortex. "Tell me she was real."

"She's from another reality, John. This world is a quilt of other realities." Twelve approaches John with heavy hearts. "You drew realities into the processor and wove them around you."

"But why me," John asks with a dark, exhausted air about him.

"Timelines converge on you because you are one of a kind, John Smith." Twelve pats John on the shoulder heavily. "It's time to go back to the Doctor."

"Who are you?" John asks the question he now remembers has been on his mind for years/all day.

"I am from another reality, where I am the Doctor, and the woman you know is my companion." Twelve answers in moderated honesty. "However, my reality is crumbling, just like this one is now. We need you and the Doctor, together. That's the only thing that can save your world."

"I'm just a temp," John says with so little energy in him that it sucks the life from him.

"You're brilliant, John Smith," Twelve smiles with a finality. "You are one of a kind, and it's time for you to find the Doctor."

John is lying on the floor, by the teleport. He doesn't have the energy to pick himself up just yet. After all he experienced in there he doesn't know if he'll ever have energy again. Tears are dried on his cheeks but he doesn't mind. They're for Nellie, after all.

"John," the Doctor's voice calls frantically. She finds him, just where he should be. He's breathing, but lying like a wounded animal. "Oh, John, I'm so sorry."

"Doctor," he whispers under his breath. He feels his body being collected into her arms. "Where is everyone?"

"They're safe," the Doctor whispers reverently at feeling of her Earthboy's heartbeat against her. She lays a kiss to his hair and continues to hold him tight, rocking slightly. "They're safe now, John."

John is limp all throughout the next little while. He feels like he's hearing everything through a tin can, when the Doctor directs the staff of The Library on what happened and how to send everyone home. Even her hand tightly holding his feels strange. Maybe he's just not used to feeling actual warmth again. "What happened to the Vashta Nerada?"

"They hatched from microspores in the books," says the Doctor. "This the their forest—their dead forest, all bound and pulped and printed. I saved their energy signature to the mainframe and deleted it."

"Where is Twelve?"

The Doctor turns remorseful, on the verge of mourning. "He took your place in the data core to guarantee a clean download."

"He's in there, now?" John looks up for the first time in hours.

"Yeah," the Doctor nods simply. "It's all right, though, I mean… He was from another universe, John, but parallel worlds are sealed. The fact that he could reach us meant that his world was being deconstructed. Here…he'll always be…safe."

"In there," John begins, "he spoke to me. He told me that the world in there is like a bunch of different realities. He said I folded a bunch of realities around me."

"Sounds like my Earthboy," the Doctor squeezes his hand gently, and almost timidly, "brilliant."

"I met someone in there," John feels emotion swell in the base of his throat again. "Her name was Nellie Bertram, and she was my best friend in that world. She had a son, who disappeared when the world started breaking down. I…I told her I'd find her. Is…she's…was she real?"

"If she was from another universe there might not be any way of knowing." The Doctor looks away as John does, both feeling drained from their experiences. "She had a son?"

"Yeah, named Drake," John sniffs his tears back, "and there was a man named Toby in her life."

"John, did you see them together, talking?" The Doctor pulls out the Sonic.

"Yeah, I even met him," John nods.

"If she were just a figment of the data core she'd be a non-animate data fragment, she wouldn't have interacted with anyone else, except possibly you. If she was from another reality, though, then it's possible her timeline just got bumped a little bit out of alignment and intersected with yours while in there. Was there anything different about her?—anything that reminded you of the world out here?" The Doctor talks excitedly, rushing her words and grasping John's arms.

"I heard you speaking to me through her, I mean, she looked just like you," John says but the Doctor shakes her head. He thinks harder. "When I first met her I saw your Sonic in her jacket pocket, but she couldn't."

"Oh, Johnny-Boy, you are brilliant!" The Doctor starts fiddling with the Sonic, adjusting settings and putting her ear to it. "If you saw her with my Sonic then there's a tie between us through realities. You said she looked just like me, and I was able to talk to you in there! I thought it was just a telepathic thing but if I spoke through her then she was like a vessel for my energy signature in there, which means we're tied through alternate universes! She's like a completely alternate version of me!"

"What does that mean?" John feels anticipation bubbling inside of him.

"I can lock onto her signature," the Doctor points the Sonic skyward and hits a button. As she does it flickers with a golden light, just like John saw in Nellie's eyes all those times. In a projection above them they see a woman who definitely has the Doctor's face but looks so different to them now. "John, this is Nellie Bertram."

John looks on the face of his best friend. She doesn't look as much like the Doctor now as he thought she did in there. The projection rotates in 3D but he just sees Nellie, smiling and playing with her son. Tears collect in his eyes. "He was real—they both were. They were real."

"They are real," the Doctor smiles at John, taking his hand tightly. He squeezes back. "They're real, John, and they're safe."

"Safe," John repeats as he brushes his thumb over the Doctor's hand, sharing his experience with his best friend with her. "They're safe."


	11. Midnight

"I said no," the Doctor sighs.

"Oh, come on, it's a sapphire waterfall! A jewel the size of a glacier, cliffs of oblivion, crystal ravine, it'll be fantastic!" John bounces excitedly.

"I bet you say that to all the girls," the Doctor smirks at him with a sly brow.

"Please, Doctor, they're boarding, and I don't wanna go by myself," John begins to pout. He widens his eyes, hoping he can make them even more doe-brown by wishing it.

"John, this trip if for us to relax." The Doctor takes a hand and whisks it down his arm. He rather took to the brown pinstripes from their trip to the 20's. "If you want to go learn about extonic sunlight radiation on a diamond planet called Midnight that's fine. However, I will be here, waiting for you to return, by the lounge pool."

"Fine, I'll be back for dinner," John concedes, thinking the Doctor really should have some time to just sit back and sunbathe. "We can try that antigravity restaurant."

"It's a date," the Doctor decrees rather quick. She can hear John's smirk so loudly she blushes pink. "Well, not a date-date, but a—oh, you know what I mean, get off."

"See you later," John smiles and bounces his brows.

"Oi," the Doctor takes John by the lapels for just a second more. "And you be careful, all right?"

"What could possibly go wrong," John jokes, but thinks a second later that he has probably jinxed himself.

The Doctor, in a fluffy white robe and sandals issued by the spa, gets on her toes. She leaves a sweet peck of a kiss on John's lips, eyes dancing. "Be safe."

John's beaming at her is interrupted by the stewardess calling for all passengers. He sneaks another kiss from her and dashes towards the shuttle. Over his shoulder: "I will!—love you!"

"Name?" asks the stewardess.

"John, John Smith," he smiles. The woman looks un-amused and he sobers a bit. "I know, but I'm not kidding, my name really is John Smith."

"Right, please, take your seat," the hostess rolls her eyes as John bounds happily onto the shuttle. She can see the woman with whom he was speaking on the platform, watching with hands clenched over her heart. The hostess smiles a little; how hopeless new love can be for people. The woman looks dazed and hopelessly yearning for the man who reminds the hostess a bit of a hyper chocolate lab puppy. Even if his enthusiasm is taxing, he still might be the nicest of the bunch. He just sits there and smiles as she hands him all things complimentary. "Enjoy your trip."

"Oh, I can't wait: allons-y!" John quips his usual motto. When the woman looks at him doubtfully again he shrugs. "It's French for let's go."

"I'm sure your wife loves that," the stewardess mutters under her breath.

John bubbles in his seat with a smile so wide it's hurting his cheeks. He's excited to see this sapphire waterfall, and to stretch his wings solo, and most of all that he got two kisses before he left! "Oh, she does."

"Professor Winfold Hobbes," a man behind John outstretches a hand.

"I'm John, hello," he smiles back. He goes to greet the woman to the Professor's left but the bespectacled man speaks again.

"It's my fourteenth time," he brags.

"Oh, my first," John raises his eyebrows.

"And I'm Dee Dee—Blasco," the sweet woman pipes up, offering a hand and a smile.

"Don't bother the man," the Professor chides her and sits them both back down.

John sits back in his seat, feeling insulted on behalf of Dee Dee but continuing in his observation. He makes eye contact with a edgy blond woman, who rolls her eyes away from him. In the back he can hear an outspoken woman. She and her equally brutish husband are trying to coax a dark haired young man over to them. He ignores, sticking headphones in with his black, nail varnished hands. John remembers when he was all broody like that when he was a teen.

The Hostess speaks up, drawing their attention to the front of the cabin. Shields are put down, doors are air-sealed and locked. Driver Joe, through the intercom, announces that they will be going off the beaten path; just a slight detour. A rattling begins as the Crusader 50 starts off, but it is soon drowned out by a horrible ruckus. There's music blaring through the room with blinding projections and annoying cartoons.

John shares exasperated looks with the blond woman and sighs, resigning himself. Maybe the Doctor was right not to come along. He wishes she were here. Maybe she could hold his hand, use that touch-telepathy of hers. He wishes he had the…wait. John slides his hand into his inside pocket, nice and slow. Long ago did he determine that the Doctor made them bigger on the inside with her alien technology doodads. Sure enough, he finds the Sonic, nestled away. He pulls it out discreetly. He could guess she trusts him with it, but he thought the time he used it in Pompeii was a fluke. Possibly just to prove him wrong the Sonic extends its glowing head and buzzes. The screens and speakers all ascend back into their ceiling pockets. John smiles at the blond, who finally smiles back.

"Ladies and gentlemen, and variations thereupon, I apologize," the hostess rushes to the front of the cabin in a bluster.

John feels a little bad for making her job harder but he couldn't have endured that racket. Not that he thinks he can endure sitting in silence for four hours any better. He closes his eyes, just for a moment, hoping that maybe if he has a little nap he can at least dream about the Doctor.

_The Doctor is laid by the Leisure Palace pool. There's no one else around, but he guesses she's probably in some alien section or something. She's wearing that white robe, that he thinks is quite cute on her, with her fiery ponytail coiled in the hood, freckles making a contrast against the white. She seems contented enough, breaking evenly, absorbing the dampened extonic rays with what looks like a strawberry drink beside her. Waiters stand about, all looking very professional about attending to her every need. As they should, John thinks._

_'I wonder how John is doing," her voice in her head also echoes in his. 'More importantly, what was it he shouted at me before he took off?'_

_John feels his heart sink; surely she had heard him._

_'He couldn't have said he loved me, he couldn't have,' the Doctor berates herself in her mind not-quite-privately. _

_Sure I could have, John protests within his own thoughts. _

_'Good kisser, though," the Doctor lets a contented sigh escape her lips before turning over on her lounge chair to purr her way into sleep._

John opens his eyes and blinks intensely. What was that? He glances at the Sonic in his hand and wonders if it has something to do with his vaguely telepathic connection to her. It existed in The Library but now he can hear her thoughts. That's different, he cocks his head. The blond from before is still reading her book, although now that he thinks about it she hasn't turned a page in an awfully long time. "Excuse me, I'm kind of lonely over here, would you mind, terribly?"

The blond woman looks at John with a mix of nervous trepidation and impatient disdain. Nonetheless she stuffs her book in her purse and nods him over. "Might as well, seeing as it's only going to get more tedious from here."

"I can't wait," John smiles at her. She seems so sad, and so tired. "I'm John Smith."

"Sky," the woman smiles back slightly. "You here alone?"

"No, I'm here with my friend, the Doctor," John pauses in his own head, thinking how strange it must sound that he, John Smith, is travelling with someone named the Doctor. "She stayed at the Leisure Palace; you?"

"No, it's just me," Sky answered back shortly.

"I've had my fair share of that too," John purses his lips, "so has the Doctor."

"I've found myself single rather recently, not by choice." Sky readjusts herself in her seat. "She needed her own space, as they say. A different galaxy, in fact. I reckon that's enough space, don't you?"

"Yeah," John nods with no other ideas of action; "I have a friend in a different universe."

"Oh," Sky looks at John oddly.

"Long story, I don't get to see her a lot," John opens his in-flight meal with a sigh but decides to smile, for Sky's sake. "Still, she's happy, and well. She's got a beautiful baby boy, and a fiance, now."

Sky, maybe picking up on John's efforts, maybe not, smiles anyway. She goes to her own meal with displeasure. "Oh, well, what's this, chicken or beef?"

"I think it's both," John examines the chunk of meat on his fork carefully. He sniffs it before actually popping it into his mouth. Oh, now that is wretched. While spitting it into his napkin he thinks to remember to ask the Doctor whether or not the invention of chick-beef is a fixed point.

"I'm not even going to try it," Sky decides after watching John turn pink, then red, then purple, then green. "Are you all right?"

"Brilliant," John chokes a bit. He downs the fake tasting juice in a hurry. He shoves the tray away from him and into the waste receptacle, as if it might bite him. Sky does the same when a rumbling alerts them. "What was that?"

John feels something wisp through his mind, like a specter. He visualizes the smoke that comes off a match when you wave it through the air. It's cold, and mysterious, like a whisper touching his mind.

"Something is wrong," Sky mumbles. She looks around, on a feasible path. "Something is out there."

John frowns at Sky but listens to the hostess declare that they've stopped. He can hear something, though, in his mind. It's like a single voice made of a thousand whispers. At glancing towards Sky he thinks she might hear it too, poor, frightened woman.

Clang-clang raps against the metal walls of the shuttle. Now everyone heard that, John grumbles in his head as he pulls out the Sonic.

"What was that?" asks the tetchy woman from the family in the back.

"It must be the metal," says the professor, "we're cooling down. It's just settling."

John doesn't believe him, though, and neither does Sky, from the way she watches the walls like him. Their eyes follow a path together. It's as if the whispering, as it rolls over the structure like mist, leaves a white hot burning in its wake. What is it? Is it fire?—flame is weirdly unstructured, neither gas nor liquid nor solid. It doesn't really have a form, and neither does this. That's just its effect, though, John corrects his thoughts, because fire can't whisper in your head.

Clang-clang is heard again, at a different point. There is a moment in which people are silent, waiting for it. John stands and moves around the cabin. He can sense this thing's movement, as it pulls his thoughts towards itself. It's moving, and thinking.

"It is impossible for any living thing to be out there," says the professor.

What if it's not living? John ignores the stubborn academic as he persists. He feels the thing move again and looks towards the door. Sky looks towards him for answers.

"What is it?" she asks John in a teary whisper.

"I don't know," John flinches as the door handle outside clanks with movement. Everyone is sent into a panic but he keeps watching. What does this thing want? If it doesn't have a body how can it make physical contact with things?

"It can't get through there." The father of the boulshy family steps up to the door. He places a palm on it and knocks three times. "That door's made of cast iron."

"It's on 200 weight hydrolics," Dee Dee ads properly.

Clang-clang-clang answers the thing. It's a sinister sound, both mocking and inviting, in a devilish way. The whispers become louder and harsher in John's head—in everyone's.

"Did you hear that?"

"It did it three times!"

"It answered him!"

John hears the people's frantic shouts but all he can concentrate on is the steady filter of voices in his head, so plentiful and quiet it's like trying to find words in white noise. Without uttering a sound John puts a hand on the door. It's physically cold to the touch, but he feels the whispers coming from the other side; a body of curling smoke that's made of nothing but swirling voices. He knocks four times.

Clang-clang-clang-clang answers the demon from outside.

"She said she'd get me. Stop it; make it stop!" Sky shouts in place.

John frowns to himself, still inspecting the door. He hasn't uttered a word since this thing showed up. It is a thing, per se. Sky said 'she', but this thing…it's not even technically alive, so how can it have a gender? Then again, he thinks, listening to the voices that try to envelop his thoughts, maybe that's an actual trait. Maybe this thing can be whatever it wants to be so long as it has a model to latch onto.

Sky shouts in a whirl of fear anger. Her voice becomes raspy with the exertion of her fright. She backs to the far wall, both shouting at the others and watching the ceiling. She can hear it, and all of its voices.

"It's coming for me," Sky whimpers, backed against the door and paralyzed in terror. "It's coming for me, it's coming for me!"

John feels the whispers become louder, fuller, inside his mind. Sky's eyes fill with horrified realization. He leaps with a hand out. "Get out of there!"

Sparks fly and things go dark. Everyone collapses as the cabin is jostled roughly. The world seems off kilter for the first few minutes of recomposing. People bring themselves to their feet and find torches to help them see. Something is very, very wrong.

John feels the cold hissing in his mind recede. It hovers near the edges of his mind, waiting to take hold again, but it's held back. A warm, golden light takes over. It has a soft voice, almost melodic. John feels relief as the warmth helps him find the strength to stand.

_The Doctor jumps awake from her slumber. There is cold sweat on her forehead and her hearts are pounding. She recognizes the sensation: this is the adrenaline of fear. 'What's happened…John?'_

_I'm here, Doctor, John answers her even though she can't hear him. _

_She stands and leaves the pool area, pushing past the rigid waiters. There is staff everywhere but no one has noticed her urgency. She bounds to a desk. "Excuse me, I'm the Doctor; there was a Crusader expedition to see the sapphire waterfalls—what happened?" _

_"I'm sorry, ma'am, communication with the Crusaders is for staff only."_

_"My husband is on that shuttle, now you tell me what happened!" the Doctor orders the man at the desk. _

_"A distress signal was sent, and we are sending another to retrieve the party now. The shuttle will reach them in an hour on emergency protocol." _

_"An hour," the Doctor's eyes spark viciously, ice cold fury dripping from her tongue. "Not good enough—they could be dead by then!" _

_"I'm sorry, ma'am, that's the fastest we can get to them." _

_"Give me the coordinates, I'll retrieve them myself," she bites at him, using every bit of restraint in her not to kill him. _

_"I can't ma'am, we don't even have the exact coordinates, just the approximate area where the bridge went down. I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do." _

_The Doctor bites her lip hard enough to draw blood. Her fist is clenched as she walks away from the innocent desk worker. She goes back to the pool area, unable to do anything else. 'John, please, I told you to be safe.'_

_I will be, John promises her in his mind. He can hear the rattling of gears in her brain going into overdrive. He can feel the cold fear pounding in her hearts. I promise I'll be safe._

"Everyone all right?" John calls out in a clipped voice.

Jethro, the boy from the back, waves off his mother. His light is pointed towards where Sky was standing. "Never mind me, what about her?"

Lights swivel around against the back wall, everyone showing equally unsteady hands. The shadow cast is solid, though. Sky sits, hands on her head, hunched over and still as the night. The seats around her have been torn clean out of the floor. Sky's body doesn't move an inch; not even to breathe.

"I can't get the driver," the hostess slams down the intercom phone and tries the door. Everyone screams as violent sunlight fills the cabin. It's over in a matter of seconds but everyone remains shaken. "Th-the cabin, it-it's gone."

"It can't be gone."

"Don't be ridiculous!"

"It can't be gone."

"There was nothing there."

John kneels to the panel connecting the cabin to the bridge. "Can I get a bit of light, here?"

"What are you doing?"

John presses forward, Sonicking the edges. "Brilliant, fantastic, molto bene," he murmurs. The panel all but slides out of the wall and into his hand. The wires are dead, like they fried themselves in a suicide attempt of machinery. "The bridge is gone, it was just…severed: sliced off."

"But if it gets separated," the hostess begins.

"It loses integrity, I know, I'm sorry," John stands and faces the group facing him. "The driver and the mechanic are gone. I am sorry, but if anything happens to the bridge it sends a distress signal, we are going to be fine. We are going to get out of here, I promise."

"Why won't she turn around?" Jethro voices, still regarding her.

"What's her name?"

"Sky," John supplies in a monosyllabic fashion. He keeps his eyes on her eerily still form as he approaches. The wall behind her is un-penetrated but he knows better. The whispers are coming from her—from her mind. "Look at me."

"That noise from outside has stopped," Jethro draws everyone's attention. "But what if it's inside?"

John has the same thought; it was headed directly for Sky and she heard a singular voiced thought before anyone else. It confirms his previous theory: this thing doesn't have a body, but it has thoughts. It just needs a voice. "Just look at me."

The first movement from Sky's body in ages comes as a hand removes itself from her head. It's a slow movement, but lacks the shakiness of a human's ministration. She unravels herself and turns to them. A human face can almost never be without expression but this face is entirely blank. The blue eyes that once possessed Sky are just a color, now, filled with whispers.

John leans closer, towards those unsettling, beady eyes. They don't move, don't hesitate and don't blink. "Sky?"

"Sky?" comes a blank, un-tempered voice.

"Are you all right? Are you hurt?" John's bones grow colder and more achy with each word repeated. This thing isn't Sky anymore, but he wishes he knew what it was.

"Why's she doing that?"

"Why's she doing that?" the creature parrots in Sky's voice, without tone or emotion.

"She's gone mad."

"She's gone mad," it repeats again.

"All of you, please," John barks loudly enough to startle them into silence. He leans closer to the creature, light shining in Sky's old eyes. "Why are you repeating? What is that: learning, copying…absorbing?"

John can still feel the thoughts circling his head, but they've got Sky's voice now. Every incomplete thought, all the words he can't quite understand, have Sky's voice and tone. So, it steals, he reasons with himself.

Everyone starts speaking at once. Their voices raise, wrung with anxiety. Each and every word is spat back at them by the creature in Sky's body. It's different now, though: it's speaking in tones. It can match every breath and inflection they make, with uncanny precision. Its head swivels so it can look at its subjects - its victims - but it never blinks. Even as it speaks the voices it emits and sends into their heads are still there, and stronger than before. The little voices, in everyone's heads, drive them mad. They don't know they can hear them, but they're there.

John feels worry claw at him. He can't get them to listen to him. Even if they listen to his words that thing will just repeat them and they'll still have a thousand whispers in their heads at once. For a moment he realizes why the Doctor finds him being human such a pertinent factor when considering his well being: we're pathetic, aren't we?

_'Oh, my Earthboy, where are you?' The Doctor paces steadily. The light from the water dances across her, but only emphasizes how tightly drawn her face is. She sent everyone away, seeing as she is nothing but helpless. All she can do is wait for John to return…or see if he does, for that matter. The thought upsets her more than she expected it to and she doubles over as a sob is ripped from her throat. She feels like she has vomited the sounds of anguish coming from her, crippled with fear. 'No, stop it, you can't think like that. John is going to need you; John does need you. Oh, if only you had linked to him.'_

_If only, John laughs at himself. _

_'You feel him, though, don't you?' The Doctor calms herself, sitting back down, at least. 'You feel that little niggling feeling of fear, don't you? That's John, and he needs your help.'_

_She can feel me, John considers, just like I can feel her. _

The lights flicker on as power resumes with an overwhelming hum. The sound of activity is all encompassing for a moment before people start to breathe. Breathing again: it's a small, comforting relief.

John stands straight but doesn't let his eyes leave the creature. He wishes the Doctor were here, now more than ever. She would have known how to get things under control without distractions. He laughs sardonically in his head; she would know what this thing is. "I need you all to calm down."

"Doctor," says Jethro.

John ignores why Jethro thinks he's the Doctor. Now is not the time. He gives pause. What would the Doctor do? How would the Doctor handle this situation? The chatter in the background fades against the whispers and Sky's voice. "I know."

John leans back down to the creature. It's different. It has an expression, its eyes are lively now. She's learning, measuring, calculating. She's absorbing. "You have our voices, you have our words."

"What is she doing?"

"She's repeating at exactly the same time."

"But that's impossible."

"There's not even a delay."

"What do you need?" John doesn't expect an answer, just keeps watching. "You repeated, then you caught up."

_That's it, John realizes with a tingle Doctor brilliance at the base of his brain. This thing goes in stages, like a chrysalis. It learns by observing, gains consciousness by stealing, words by repeating and a voice by embodying._

"You're…becoming; this is you coming into life." John watches the eyes that are darker than before. They swirl with malice, and a malevolence he has never seen and hopes never to see again.

"Tell her to stop it!"

"Look at her."

"She let me go."

"It's just him."

_I know why, too. I can hear them; that's it, isn't it? I can hear your voices, all of the whispers that make up your existence. Because without those you're nothing, just smoke in the midnight air, am I right? So, why steal my words in particular? Why do you need my voice?_

"You need _my_ voice…because of the other voice," John leans his head a little more forward, indicating his head. He knows this thing is in his head, and the only thing saving him is the Doctor. "The only one stronger than yours."

"Listen to me, if it's form, or consciousness, or a voice, you don't have to steal it. I can help you."

_The Doctor feels a shiver run through her. She's freezing, despite the tropical temperature around her. She's still in a cold sweat and there's a horrible ache coming from somewhere indiscernible within. She feels like a part of her is dying. When she felt John a moment ago she was all right but the light at the end of the tunnel is fading. She can't feel him anymore. 'Oh, no, please, John, you have to come back to me." _

"We can help you," John presses but as soon as the Doctor's voice fades from his mind the whispers fill in. His head feels like a beehive full of insufferable buzzing.

"Do we have a deal?"

"Do we have a deal?" John's sentence trails after hers. This thing, now taken over Sky, smiles. It is the most disturbing thing he has ever seen. He can't look away, though. He can't move, he can't blink, he can't even breathe. He can see into those eyes, that laugh, because now they have him. The voices are laughing, because soon he'll be one of them.

_Please, listen to me. If you want a voice I can help you - the Doctor can help you - but this isn't right!—John screams in his head. It's no use, though. The buzzing is driving him mad and every nerve synapse in him is burning in agony. _

_'John, tell me you can hear me, please!' the Doctor calls out to her Earthboy, using everything in her to try and reach him. _

_Doctor, no!—but it's too late. That thing latches onto the Doctor, in John's mind: her body, her voice, her mind. _

_No, please, leave her alone, John begs. He struggles to drag air through his clenched teeth but it's taking every ounce of his strength not to let his own skull implode. You can have my body, and my mind, my thoughts, my voice! You can have it all if you leave me my connection to her! Please, just let me keep my connection to her—I love her!_

_Love._

_What a new thing._

_John's heart struggles to beat as he realizes this thing is going to take everything. It has his words, it's taking his voice, soon it will have his body, and then it will take his love. Every thought is already being sucked into the void of whispers and every emotion will soon join. _

"She spoke first."

"How can that be?"

"They're working together!"

"He's with her!"

"No," the hostess whispers in horror at what's happening. Her eyes flick to Miss Blasco, who looks just as scared but sure of it. "No, his wife is back at the Leisure Palace I saw them."

"Then he's working with her!"

"No, I think it's in him now."

"It moved!"

"I saw it!"

"No, that's not what happened!" Dee Dee speaks up, ignoring the professor's angry glare. "This creature is new, and learning, but it has a consciousness, which means it must have a rate of evolution. It copied him, then it caught up with him, and now it's ahead of him—that's how the cycle works!"

"She's got his voice," the hostess repeats to herself. She can see the face of the woman who used to be Sky. It's not right; it's evil looking, and sinister.

"No, she's safe now!"

"I saw it!"

"It's in him!"

"We have to get rid of him!"

"Yes," says the creature in Sky.

"Yes," John feels the voice and words dragged out of his throat. They scrape along his raw vocal chords, forcefully ripped out of him.

"Throw him out."

"Throw him out," John repeats helplessly. He can't help his voice. It's well out of his control. He can barely even cling to his thoughts. Never has he ever wished so much for time alone with his thoughts.

_I never got to tell the Doctor I love her._

"We can't throw him out!"

"Yes, we can!"

"Out the fire exit!"

"He has a wife!"

"No one is getting thrown out!" the hostess shouts in what she hopes is a firm tone.

"Get rid of him!" the creature stands, testing out its new physicality.

"Get rid of him," John seethes. Spit collects around the corners of his mouth, where his teeth are ground together. He can't breathe. He can feel his heart dying inside of him. He can't breathe. He can't breathe!

Air: it's a small amount but it's enough. It flows through him and out through his teeth. It comes again and again, as if suddenly appearing in his lungs.

_'Hold on, Earthboy, help is on the way,' the Doctor echoes through John's mind. Her hearts are steady, her breathing is even. _

_That's it, John finally regains some conscious ability. I'm breathing through her; that's why I'm still alive._

"She's been saved."

_That's wrong, John screams mentally, she's not safe! It's to no avail; the buzzing is overpowering. His thoughts begin to cloud over again as it all starts to become white noise. _

"Cast him out!"

"Cast him out," John gasps and spits from the exertion of trying not to.

"It's inside his head."

"It's inside his head." _Great, now it's mocking me._

"That's what he does," the beast smirks.

"That's what he does."

"He gets in your head," and John echoes, "and makes you fight."

"And makes you fight," John begins trembling. He feels as if every cell in his body is being torn apart from the inside.

"It's him!"

"He's just repeating!"

"That's what it does!"

"It's got his voice!"

"Throw him out!" the creature declares loudly, with triumph in its voice.

"Throw him out!" _No, they can't do this. What about the Doctor? I can't die here. Who will know? They won't even have a body to find. What if it keeps my voice?—my thoughts, my words? What if it gets to her?_

"Get rid of him!"

"Get rid of him!" _You can't, please, remember your humility! Humans are better than this! We're better than this, please!_

"Molto bene!"

"Molto bene!"

"That's him," the hostess locks eyes John's lifeless form as the husband tries to lift him.

"Allons-y!"

"Allons-y!"

_Don't you dare use that word. The single thought drowns out the buzzing for a moment. John feels cold, and stiff, like his bones are made of metal. _

_'John!' the Doctor feels the telepathic hand of her Earthboy in her mind. She takes it, squeezing tight. 'What is this?'_

_Doctor, it's in my head, John feels the thoughts becoming noise again. _

_The Doctor focuses on their connection. She focuses everything she has, telepath and empath, into it. John's mind is in so much pain. There is a hurricane inside that mind. It's all grey, a twister of smoke that emits only demonic whispers and nightmarish laughter. 'If you want a battle of minds I promise you will lose now let him go!' _

_Doctor, I can't! John feels nothing around him but emptiness. His eyes, barely still showing him anything, show the door. They're going to kill me! Doctor, they're going to kill me!_

_Get out!_

"She's taken his voice!"

John's eyes glow gold as the Doctor's telepathic connection bursts in his mind like a volcano. A warmth erupts in him, restoring life into his body as he throws himself from their murderous arms. As the golden light flows out of him he sees something. No one else can but John sees it. It's a black kind of wispy presence, like smoke. It's smoke made of whispers, and pure, natural evil.

The hostess hits the fire exit alarm. Wind fills the cabin. Blaring light hits them with a destructive force.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

We must not look at Goblin Men.

We must not buy their fruits.

John fills his lungs with air greedily. Every muscle in his body unclenches at the relief of being him again. He rolls onto his back, heaving with pain and bliss all at once. "It's gone."

The hostess is still alive. She sits. Everyone sits. They can't stand. They can't think. They can't even cry. No one can do anything but try to breathe, and remember that they're still alive. They remain like that, silent, wondering, until the shuttle arrives. They board silently. They sit silently. They leave silently.

John revels in the feeling of solid earth under his trainers. He's so tired, but he manages to drag his head up to look ahead. A halo of red awaits him. His steps are slow, haunted. She approaches slowly, as if afraid he might disappear. When he's near she throws her arms around him. He brings his arms around her as well, finding it just as comforting a reply as the action.

"You're safe, you're okay," the Doctor repeats into John's chest. Her whispers are harried, like the ones in his head were, but they're so much warmer. The carry a trace of her voice, like a faint promise of life. "You're all right, I've got you."

"I love you," John whispers into her hair. The warmth of her on his lips is the most soothing thing he has ever experienced.

"I love you, too," she whispers, part way through a sob. She sits them both down on her lounge chair, him, partly folded around her. "What do you think it was?"

"I don't know," John says slowly. "Just some creature without a body or a mind just…an essence."

"We'll have to tell this lot," the Doctor looks about her. When she looks back at John, still looking traumatized, she sighs. She takes his hand gently and he looks at her. "John, I'm so sorry-"

"No, no, absolutely not," John finally regains some vitality. He pulls whatever strength he has left into his eyes as he takes the Doctor's cheeks in his hands. She shows no nervousness at the gesture and he loves how she trusts in him. "Doctor, I am only here right now because you saved me. You saved me and all those people on that shuttle."

"Them," the Doctor spits with an acid tongue. She would love nothing more than to force those people to face themselves and what thy did. John simply isn't up to it and he deserves to rest. He deserves time to heal and they deserve to stew in their guilty consciences.

"Doctor, if you had been there," John shudders, "God knows if anyone would have made it out of there."

"I should have been there for you," the Doctor runs a hand down John's chest and pats the pocket there. "Tell me the Sonic at least did you some good."

"Handy dandy," John smiles freely and gladly.

"Come on, Earthboy, let's get out of here," the Doctor stands, John's hand in hers. "I think a nice night in the TARDIS is just what we need."

"Allons-y," John sighs tiredly.

"Allons-y," the Doctor repeats before she realizes her mistake. John looks like he has seen the ghost of his worst nightmare. "I-I'm…I'm sorry."

"No," John simply shakes his head. Rather than dwell on it he squeezes the Doctor's hand and forces a smile. When she smiles back he finds it easy to smile for real. "I love you."

"I love you, too."


	12. Turn Left

"Easy," the Doctor watches John's hands carefully as they navigate the TARDIS controls. He has become a real whiz at this, but that knowledge is not entirely comforting.

"Can I know where we're going now?" The question sounds humorous, timid, and classic John Smith. His eyes, though, are a little more serious as he directs them towards the woman behind him.

The Doctor is leaned against the jump seat. Her arms are crossed, creating a cradle for her coppery hair. The grey sweater she always wears has a vaguely turquoise tone from reflecting the turbine lights. "We're on course, John, through the vortex and into the plane of space! Space: the final frontier—come on, John, you love that stuff!"

"Doctor," John presses and he hears her sigh. He continues piloting, but is glad when he hears movement. Soon enough she is leaning against the console, comfortably in his periphery. "Where and when are we going?"

"No when, this time, Earthboy," the Doctor smiles. It's a soft smile, with a touch of sadness in its gentility. "We're headed towards the Shadow Proclamation."

"The what?" John fixates a lever so he can face the Doctor properly. She does seem awfully run down. It's not her usual way, either, like when she lets her facade drop and looks horribly lost when she thinks he's turned away. This is a deep rooted melancholy in her.

"The Shadow Proclamation is a posh name for police—outer space police." The Doctor shifts again, with her arms still folded. "I have to speak with them regarding protocol on reality boundaries. That man from The Library, Thet—Twelve, I mean, he was from another reality. His appearance in this world is dangerous. The Shadow Proclamation has writs that must be adhered to."

"Right, so we're going to talk to alien police about a fictional man from another reality who is now in a virtual reality within a fictional world?" John figures he's not getting much more out of the Doctor for now and continues on, following their coordinates. "On another note, how did you sleep?"

The Doctor cracks a smile reluctantly. For the first time in a month or so, she did sleep. She refers to her requirement for sleep as her "time of the month". She still doesn't think John knows to what she's actually referring. The couple of hours she lounged in the TARDIS library did next to no good, though. If anything she's more anxious than before. It was nice to wake up to another presence, though. John, at some point, draped himself in a chair opposite her and napped there contentedly. "Fine, thanks; how's your back after sleeping in that chair?"

"I know you're lying, by the way, but that's all right. I slept fine, and the chair was just for a power nap," John shrugs. He looks at the Doctor and winks. "I just wanted an excuse to watch you, really. Not creepily, but you're breathtaking when you're asleep, you know that?"

The Doctor feels her cheeks become hot at the affectionate compliment. She curses her weakness for her Earthboy but is unable to resist smiling. "Okay, very smooth, Johnny-Boy."

"Seriously, though," John flicks a knob, breaking eye contact for only a second, "how was your sleep?"

"It was sufficient, I guess," the Doctor sighs with distinct defeat. "It was wrought with nightmares."

"Gallifrey," John whispers in a tiny, tiny askance of her.

"You; Midnight," she whispers back. The Doctor looks away, trying to compose herself, but lets her hand gravitate to his. The back of his hand is warm against her palm. In a moment she looks back at him. "Do you have nightmares?—about this, any of it?"

"I used to on occasion," John admits quietly. The Doctor lets go of his hand only when he needs it for work, then reclaims it without a word. "I don't anymore, really. I only dream of you."

"Sauce is gettin' a little thick, there, John," the Doctor rolls her eyes but laughs.

"I mean it," John smiles widely. A beep captures his attention.

"Temporal interference," the Doctor murmurs, pulling out her glasses. "There's some sort of…wibbly-wobbly area."

"Wibbly-wobbly?" John echoes her.

"It's not a rift, or a pocket, it's like…like a zipper, where times and dimensions are being bound together." The Doctor tippety-types a bit and whacks the screen a few times. "It's like a dimensional fork in the road."

The lights flicker as the TARDIS lurches drastically. She rocks back and forth as if being pulled by the arms she doesn't have. Her interior creaks and screeches in protest.

"Doctor, what's happening?" John asks but can barely hear it in his own ears. The Doctor doesn't seem any more capable of hearing his words. She clings to the console, still trying to navigate whatever is happening. John doesn't feel like he's using anything to keep himself upright, but he hasn't fallen either. "Doctor, tell me what's happening?"

"John?" the Doctor turns, no longer seeing John beside her. "John, where are you?"

"Doctor?" John feels odd, like he's in a vivid dream. He can't actually feel anything, or hear anything, but he still knows what's going on. It's getting hard to see, though. His mind's eye keeps blinking. He can barely see the Doctor anymore. There are two different points of light before him. They're tunnels with light so bright at their ends that it's all he can see.

John closes his eyes, surrendering to a sleepy state.

_There's a woman. She's standing alone on a metal platform. It looks like a basement. There's water everywhere. Is it raining? Is it raining indoors? No, it's a flood. This place is flooding. _

_I'm so tired, the woman thinks, and John hears. She is, too. Looking down to where the water drains she is so tired. Her entire being is rife with grief. '_I just don't think I can do this anymore._' _

_A glowing gold appears in the woman's eyes, but she closes them. She tilts her head upwards. The glowing recedes behind her eyelids. The place is still flooding and the drain isn't keeping the water down. The woman stays still. Water rises around her and soon she is completely submerged. Her wildly red hair dances in the water before her face, which is serene. The tendrils look like ribbons, flowing about. The woman still does not move, does not breathe, and does not open her eyes. She is still tired, and she is making no move to save herself. There is nothing else for her, here. She has nothing and no one to stop her. _

John startles awake from his dream. He scrubs his face with a groan. Now, that is a weird one, he grumbles in his head. Rather than lying in bed he finds himself swinging around in his swivel chair. He looks up at the wall, at the clock by the H.C. Clements logo sign. The hands are still.

Something sparks in John's mind but he ignores it and goes back to typing. He's done everything, but he can't look too bored or he'll get more work to do.

"Excuse me," a man addresses.

"Do you have an appointment?" John asks on instinct. When he looks up there's a dark haired man in black there. He looks alarmed. "Is everything all right, sir?"

"Y-yeah, I, uh," the man glances all over John's form and around him. "You're…John, right?—John Smith?"

"Yes, sir, been the temp here for," John shakes his head a little, "six months?"

"Right, how do you like it here?" the man asks.

John frowns at how invested this bloke suddenly is. "Fine, I suppose, why?"

"Just, you know, have you met anyone? I mean, well, found anyone who catches your eye?" The man shifts uneasily.

"Not really, no," John drawls to emphasize how uncomfortable he is.

"Merry Christmas!" the pub choruses at the crack of midnight.

John feels positively nauseated. He can't decide if it's because of how spacey he feels, because he hates Christmas, or because it means another damned year of being another damned temp in all of damned London. A temp from Chiswick, he scoffs at himself in his head. His Mum might be onto something; John takes a sip of his drink. He's just…plain.

"Everyone come outside! Shut up and come outside!—just look at the sky! It's a Christmas star!"

John could not care less, really, but he hauls himself up anyway. He's entirely willing if it gets him out of here. As opposed to pushing his way through the crowd it seems to push right past him. Trust John Smith to be ignored by even a mob. One person does bump into him, muttering and apology to some 'doctor' under his breath. The sky, black as anything, has one, big, discernibly white _thing_ floating through it. It's monstrous, and menacing. "That's not a star…it's a web."

"Racnoss," a voice appears behind John.

John whips around to see the bloke from the office. "I remember you. You came into the office six months ago."

"No, it wasn't six months ago," says the dark haired man. "It was only a few minutes ago. I'm Lee, by the way, Lee McAvoy."

"Lee," John whispers under his breath.

"Yeah, and that," Lee points, "is the Racnoss ship. They've been buried at the center of the Earth since the dark ages, but they're out now…and there's nothing to stop them."

Several lights zoom through the sky. Most make contact, fraying the web at its edges.

John squints at the display, but isn't fazed. "Beg to differ, there, mate, they seem to be taking care of it."

"This is just the beginning, though," Lee sighs heavily. He has the distinct tone of someone who has to keep an awfully large secret.

"Greyhound 15, what is your report?—over."

John looks towards a soldier with a radio. "What's happened now?"

"We found a body, sir. Must have happened too fast for her to regenerate; she just didn't make it out in time."

John watches a feminine arm slip from the blanketed gurney. The hand drops a sleek, custom looking pen to the ground. It's a ghastly sight, and John feels unusually disturbed by it.

"The Doctor is dead."

John feels it odd that his dream from that morning would come to him now. He remembers the woman from it, with fiery hair and pale skin. She was draining something—a huge body of water. The Thames is empty.

_She has nothing and no one to stop her. _

_The woman dies. _

John turns to Lee, who has tears in his eyes. For a fleeting second John feels affronted, but can't place why. "Did you know her?—that doctor?"

"_The_ Doctor," Lee corrects John roughly. His eyes are steady, as they continue to scan over John carefully. "You knew her too."

"No, I didn't," John denies quickly and vehemently, though nothing has ever sounded less convincing to him.

"You did, though. I think you dream of her, sometimes." Lee takes on a different tone, a little closer to edgy this time. "A brilliant woman, beautiful, in a leather coat with…really great—really red hair."

John feels like he's being pulled down a tunnel. It's as if he were a magnet, flying towards his other half. In the time it takes him to blink he's downtown, walking briskly in some undetermined direction. While he's questioning it he continues to walk. He arrives at a door and instinctively reaches inside his coat - when did he get this bloody long thing - pocket. He pulls out a kind of a badge, that he sees is blank. Regardless, the security staff lets him by, murmuring 'doctor' as he goes.

"Ah, John, good to see you," Lee rounds the corner and falls in step with John.

"What the hell is going on?" John asks but keeps his eyes forward, even as Lee claps a hand on his shoulder.

"It's a rift in time. In fact, there are so many rifts conflicting with each other it's like a mass collection of whirlpools, clustered and drawing in time." Lee looks at John and pointedly ignores his disbelieving expression. "It sounds crazy, I know, that's why we needed the Doctor."

"What am I doing here? What are you doing here, for that matter?" John turns to Lee sharply, now, with his hands shoved into his pockets. He can't feel the bottom of them. He can't even feel the lining of them; what is with this coat?

"Well, we're on time right now, but another wave is coming."

John feels what he has named the "tunnel effect" again. He blinks and is relieved to see everything fairly unchanged. Lee is still beside him and he doesn't feel like he has lost years of his life. "What is it now?"

"We're only days from before, but it's too late." Lee gestures to the window. It looks like hail the size of kittens is ascending into the sky. A blue beam of light comes into view and draws the whit blobs into it. "Every one of those things is a person: dead."

"What," John chokes a little on the question.

"The Doctor was supposed to be here, and she needed you with her to stop this."

"Why me?" John hisses at Lee madly. "I'm no one special, I'm just a temp. If she was so extraordinary - this Doctor - why was she with me?!"

"She thought you were brilliant," Lee laments, taking on that same tone as before when John couldn't pinpoint it.

The word "brilliant" echoes in John's mind a little but he pushes it aside. "I'm not, I assure you. As for this Doctor, I don't know her. You seem to know all about her so why don't you do something helpful?!"

"This is all wrong, John," Lee looks intensely at the younger man, "this world is wrong."

John feels a familiar swirling in his brain: "the world is wrong?"

"My world is wrong too, but it's saved—it's safe. This world is wrong. This is a world without the Doctor, and without her, everything will end."

"Why are you telling me?!" John shouts, grabbing Lee by his shirt collar for lack of anything better to do. "What can I do?! I can't help! I'm nothing special—I'm nothing!"

"You're one of a kind," Lee smiles, despite John's raging anger. "I'm from another world, and I've seen what's happening."

"What is it?" John demands through his teeth, still not releasing Lee.

"If this world continues on track, you will become the Doctor as realities intersect. However, whether you're the Doctor or she is, you need each other. If we let time progress until you become the Doctor and don't have her by your side the world is doomed. Every world is doomed and the end of time will come. Reality will be ripped apart." Lee implores John to listen to him through his eyes. "You're not who you think you are, John. You're one of a kind: you're a Time Lord."

John all but throws Lee by his collar. This is unbelievable. He can't actually make himself absorb it. There is nothing logical about any of this. How can any of it be true? He's just John Smith. He pauses. Against his gut instinct he pulls out the paper he showed the security guard of the building. It's blank for a second, but words start to scribble themselves into view.

_The Doctor_

Then, they fade, and new words replace them.

_The Doctor and John Smith_

_John Smith_

_Doctor Donna_

_TARDIS_

_Shadow Proclamation_

_Turn Left_

_ShadowProclamationShadowProclamationShadowProclama tionShadowProclamationTurnLeftTurnLeftTurnLeftTurn LeftTurnLeftTurnLeftTurnLeft_

"What is this," John turns to look at Lee but finds himself on a bench; "thing".

It's not night, but the sky is horribly dark. The air is wretched and he can't for the life of him remember what has transpired. Some foggy memories show time passed and life lived, but they're distant, like an echo. The sky is dark. The air is wretched.

"It belonged to the Doctor," Lee answers, seeming to have appeared spontaneously beside John. He's still wearing the same clothes.

"What's wrong with the air?" John looks up to the grey blanket of sky.

"It's Atmos," Lee laments simply as explanation. He offers a shrug, which is somewhat apologetic. While John flinches as the sky becomes engulfed in flame Lee remains unfazed. "Torchwood is gone, the _Valiant_ is down and the Earth is safe, for now. The worst is yet to come, though."

"What could be worse? How many people have died through all the events that have happened?! What could be worse than this?!"

"John, look," Wilf points.

John obeys, no longer questioning the way the world bends around him. The motion sickness isn't as bad as it was the times before. He knows it won't be long before Lee shows up again. Lee always shows up when time does this weird jumpy thing. "What's wrong; what is it?"

"Look," Wilf stumbles a bit. "The stars are going out."

John watches. His eyes burn, unblinking, as he sees the light dying out of the sky. The stars are dying. John blinks with all the strength he has in him. He finds it's not much. When he opens his eyes he's at a shipping yard or something. He turns around. "Tell me what to do."

"Come with me," Lee nods his head. He doesn't wait to see if John is following, knowing that he is. A brisk walk and soon they're in the center of an operation. Several mirrors are aligned in a circle, with lights and technology all hooked up and whirring away. Parallel to those is a blue, wooden police box. "John Smith, this is the TARDIS."

"TARDIS," John recalls it being one of the words that magic paper scrawled out for him.

"Time and Relative Dimension in Space," Lee spells out quite literally. He opens the door and beckons for John to follow. As soon as the brown haired man steps in the center console moans with activity. It's a pain riddled, pitiful response, but a reaction nonetheless. "You two are old friends."

"Like how I know the Doctor?" John jabs dryly, with a humorless eyebrow raise. He does feel something, though. It's an instinct, urging him that he knows why this thing is bigger on the inside, and why it's so dark, and why he feels so at home. John pats the console and a few lights cough and hiccup out a response. "There, there, old girl; it's all right."

"You traveled in this, with the Doctor, in your world." Lee glances around the room fondly but wistfully. "I did too, once upon a time."

"You and the Doctor," John folds his arms and purses his lips. "Were you…?—you know?"

Lee doesn't dignify the question with a response for quit a while. "I fell in love with her, like I think everyone does, at least a little bit. We ended up in this world called The Library: my world. In there, time plays tricks like it's doing here, now. The Doctor could see because she was a Time Lady; last of her kind. In this fake world a life is constructed for you, it's just up to you to accept it fully to actualize it. In this fake world the Doctor and I were married, had a life, kids. I wanted it to be true so badly I believed it entirely. That's how I died."

"I'm sorry?" John asks more than apologizes.

"I can't exist outside of The Library anymore because I'm nothing but a data ghost. The only reason I can be here now is because you happened on a tear in time and reality itself. The parallels of worlds are breaking down, but they're folding around you. Time is folding around you."

"I told you, I'm nothing special," John repeats, sounding more tired and fed up than he meant to.

"You're brilliant—the Doctor thought so." Again, Lee says it in a clipped tone that John can now identify as envy. He can't blame him; as Lee tells it, he was cheated out of his true love by a life of a lie. There are sounds bouncing around and the two men register them as coming from the world around them. Another wave has hit; time and the world are still wrong. Lee scans John with his eyes again. "You should see."

John quietly stalks over to the mirror circle with Lee. He doesn't know when he became so rude and broody. "What are the mirrors for?"

"The TARDIS has some very complex technology, but I've figured out some basics; just enough to help her show you."

John doesn't flinch as the lights flick on. He glances at his reflection in the mirror. It's not really him, is it? He looks down at himself, finding his attire to be trainers, jeans, and a faded blue flannel buttoned over a plain t-shirt. Yet, the man in the mirrors is different, but entirely John. The reflection has John's thick hair, but wildly swept every which way. His eyes are still brown, but a little darker, hollowed out—more intense than John's. The reflection wears the coat John thought he was wearing up until now, and a brown pinstripe suit. They have the same trainers at least. The reflection is John Smith, just…a different John Smith.

"This is the Doctor from another reality, separate from yours and mine all together. We're tied in small ways, but not enough to create a timeline that can remain stable. Reality is too weak, and the dimensions of the universe are too broken down to stand on their own. They need to be woven together to create a new dimension of reality. That's why you're here, John," says Lee.

"So, I'm not actually as special as you said!" John shouts from his frightening little place within the mirror circle. "I'm not as important as you said, it's because this guy and I are half the same person, that's it! It's not John Smith, it's the Doctor—this Doctor!"

"No, John, it is you!" Lee argues almost kindly. "You are literally one of a kind. All realities seem to gravitate towards and bend around you. You are able to interweave realities, and no one - not even the Doctor - could do that. You can interlock timelines to create new realities—stable realities! You're the only one who can do it and you're the only one who can save us. This world is wrong, but so is yours, John. Tell her that. Tell her the world is wrong. You have to get back to her and tell her that."

"How?" John asks in nothing more than a whisper. Everywhere he turns this identical stranger has his eyes burning into John's.

"We can send you back into the vortex using the TARDIS." Lee speaks as he starts rewiring things. The reflection disappears even though the lights remain bright and the mirrors are still there. "You hit a kink in your timeline, just enough to throw you off track and into a vortex of fluctuating reality. You were on your way through space when you hit the tear, giving you the option to turn right towards the Medusa Cascade, or left, towards the Shadow Proclamation. You ended up being pulled towards the Medusa Cascade to the right but that's where some major fluctuations are happening in another reality. In another dimension, the Medusa Cascade is crumbling out of reality, because the universes are being ripped apart. It wasn't stable enough to handle your anomalous reality bending so all of the crumbling universes literally folded themselves around you as a stabilizer. You can't, though, it will mean the end of you, the Doctor, everything. You have to turn left, towards the Shadow Proclamation, where you and the Doctor can save reality—every reality. Just remember, I know it's hard to control, but when you feel time pulling around you have to aim for the Shadow Proclamation. Just remember John, turn left."

"Turn left," John nods, feeling at least a little more sure of himself. Time is starting to bend again, but this time he's aware of it. He can feel it; he can feel the flow of time around him. He can remember, too. He remembers the Doctor, and the time they had. "When you say this world is wrong, it's because it was never supposed to exist. My world is wrong because it's not complete. I have to rewrite reality, by finding the Doctor. I can do it. I can do it for her! I can find the Doctor, because I remember her! She can't die because in my world; she has a future—with me! The Doctor and I can change the future because she's a Time Lord! She is a Lady of Time; she can save us! I'll do it. I'll do it, and anything else, because I remember everything I've done for her. I waited a whole year through a crack in time in my world. I faced Sontarans and Ood and fortune tellers who tell me I'm not who I think I am for her! I'd do it all again for her because I love her!"

Lee's smile drops and his face becomes pained. He holds the kind of sadness a man has when he loses his world right in front of his eyes. Maybe he has. "Tell her the world is wrong."

"This world is wrong but ours can be saved!" John shouts but registers Lee's expression. "That's right, isn't it? If I go back the Doctor lives and we rewrite the future, right? We're still together in my world, right?! I'm alive and so is she! She lives!"

Lee swallows his tears; tears for the woman he still loves. "I'm sorry."


	13. The Stolen Earth

"Doctor?"

Wilf lets the woman in surreptitiously, seeing as how she looks like a woman possessed anyway. Her eyes are wide and she hardly waits for him to move before she goes into the house. The man closes the door and finds her standing in the kitchen, turning full circle.

"John's not here," the Doctor says with a harried whisper of an undertone.

"He's not with you?" Wilf asks with a shaky pointing hand. Instead of answering the Doctor continues to nibble at her lips. Her eyes move in dizzying patterns.

"He disappeared. We were - he was - in—I don't know! He's gone, he has just…vanished!" The Doctor seems more and more human as she spirals into hysterics. Her eyes become wrought with emotion, glazing over with tears. The frantic tone in her voice is frightening.

"All right, now, all right," Wilf goes to the ginger woman. She allows him to take her by the shoulders and lead her to the sitting room. He sits her down in a chair and mentions tea, although she's not listening. She does nothing but sit, looking horribly lost and distressed, moving her head wildly at every stimulus around her. She looks broken.

The Doctor hears the whistle of the kettle but doesn't pay it any heed. She's paying everything else too much attention. She's paying everything too much attention, she feels like her head is going to split open. Every little sound outside and flash of light is too much for her to handle. She hasn't felt like this in a long time. It has been a long time since she felt so alone that not even silence could keep her company.

""Here we are, Sweetheart." Wilf places the cup in the woman's hands, guiding them with his so he's sure she can hold it herself. Slowly, he takes his hands away and sits. "Now, what's happened?"

"John," the Doctor begins, letting his name slip like a precious secret. "He just…disappeared. I blinked - all I did was blink - and he was gone."

"That's impossible," Wilf frowns deeply.

"Not impossible," the Doctor sighs, "just a bit unlikely."

"So, what could have been the cause of it?" Wilf leans forward. He's trying to understand it all. It's not that he thinks the Doctor let something endanger John, but it's a little out of his grasp at the moment. John never fully explained their travels, just gave summaries. Well, he abbreviated their travels and then spent tedious time talking about the Doctor. Wilf would sometimes put the phone down and make himself a cuppa, just to give himself a break. John could talk any person's ear off, and he sounded like a boy with his first crush when he talked about the Doctor. "The last I talked to him he said he had been to a planet of diamonds, called Midnight."

"What did he say?" the Doctor asked. She felt dread and shame flood her. What Wilfred must think of her, letting his only grandson go off with an alien madwoman who couldn't even keep him safe. Had John told Wilf that he had made a mistake in going with her? Had he said that they were in a (tentatively developing) relationship? Did he mention the times he wanted to go home? He did he mention their relationship?!

"Oh, he said it was brilliant, mentioned his jaunt around the diamonds. He told me about this creature that was out there, and how he saved them, with your help!" Wilfred talks with excitement, and the pride one would expect from a grandfather.

"Oh, no, that wasn't me, that was all John," the Doctor smiles as well.

"No, he said that you had some telepathy nonsense and that's how he defeated that thing! Oh, you should have heard him, Doctor. John used to always play superheroes with his father, tellin' stories of adventures in outer space. He sounded just like he was a kid again!" Wilfred laughs a little to himself before letting the air settle. When he looks at the Doctor she still looks disheartened. Wilf pats her hand with his. "You've made his dreams come true, Doctor. John never thought he would do anything spectacular when he grew up. As he grew up, he lost his dream of being a spaceman, and travelin' the stars. You saved him."

The Doctor drops her head as tears fall from her eyes. She's shaking, and she wishes she weren't. Above her pride she can't afford to be breaking down over John like this. There will be time for tears later. She looks up, letting Wilfred keep her hand under his while her other grasps her tea. "Wilf, I will find John."

"Oh, I know you will." Wilf says it without a hint of doubt in his voice. It's a matter of fact statement, almost cocky as he takes a sip of tea.

The Doctor affords Wilf his tea and goes back to her own. She's still pouting a bit, but more in thought than anything. She had hoped beyond hope that John had been transported home in some kind of protocol blip thanks to the TARDIS. No such luck, and John has disappeared without a trace. He wasn't transported or quantum pulled, he just up and POOF!

Wilf watches the Doctor, deep, deep in thought. If computers could have expressions while processing things he thinks that would be the Doctor right now. Every couple of seconds her lips will move, ghosting over malformed words. Maybe it's a different language. "Is there anything I can do?"

The Doctor smiles at Wilfred Mott. He is such a sweet man, and she really adores him. She wishes she had family like him; well, it's more like she wishes, if she had family, it would be him. "I don't know."

"What about that link John was telling me about? He said he could hear your thoughts. Nothing naughty, but," Wilf tilts his head inquisitively. The Doctor goes through a range of emotional reactions. First she turns pensive, then confused, then a little abashed before settling on blank. "What is it, Doctor?"

"Wilf, do you remember the year that wasn't?"

It sounds like a ludicrous question, but Wilf realizes what she means. He does remember, although that's not what he calls it. To him it was a year like any other, although when the new year rang in things were certainly different from before. "That's what John called it."

"It was a ripple in time, that resulted in a year's worth of reality passing in what was actually minutes. It separated John and I before Adipose Industries."

"He spent the year working as a temp, just the norm, like always. He was waiting for you." Wilfred sees he has the Doctor's full anticipatory attention and continues. "He spent the year waiting to find you, again. He remembered meeting you, in the TARDIS, and wanting to go with you."

"Wilf, I gave John a ring," the Doctor begins and starts talking with her hands, the first sing of her returning to herself. "It's a biodampener, it locks onto a genetic signature. It usually blocks, but I have my own, linked to John's."

"So, you have a matching ring set?" Wilf raises his brows in a way that is most certainly from where John gets it. "Rings that keep you bound together?"

"Guess you could put it like that," the Doctor murmurs grudgingly. It's not an unpleasant thought, but there is a better time and place for this conversation. "Anyway, the ring I gave John is connected to mine."

"Yeah, he told me it was to keep him hidden. Why do you have one? Is it because you're an alien?" Wilf knows it might not be the best time or the right question to ask, but he's curious!

"Um, kind of an endangered species," the Doctor squint, neither denying him an answer nor lying about the whole truth. "Anyway, did John wear it through the year when we were separated? He doesn't wear it now but he mentioned once he left it here."

"Oh!—yes, he did, it's here!" Wilf near jumps up and dances at the epiphany. "He put it in a hiding place 'cause he was afraid Sylvia would steal it from him."

"Yeah, she's not exactly a fan of mine, is she," the Doctor sighs. She has bigger problems than John's intolerant mother. Regardless, she follows Wilf as he leads her hurriedly through the house. The two of them trot up the stairs and Wilf opens a door. The room looks aged, but designed for an adolescent. There are stacks of comic books on the floor while other books are thrown about the room, on shelves and on the desk. "This is John's room."

"Yep, nary changed since he was a boy." Wilf begins rifling through John's desk drawers, tossing out useless objects. "Oh, I know he put it in here somewhere."

The Doctor lets Wilf forage at his own will. She glances around the room fondly, noticing little touches of John here and there. The lamp is clearly a new addition, fairly modern. On the other hand the blanket at the foot of the bed is bright red, with a lightning bolt insignia folded at its center.

"He used to tie that around his neck and run around with it for a cape," Wilf looks away from his task briefly only to comment.

The Doctor chuckles a little. She hopes she can get to know more of John's past (and maybe his future). "He loves superheroes."

"I think he liked that they could be ordinary people and still do super things." Wilf walks over to the Doctor, who is still drifting a feather light touch over it. "John always thought he was average, but he still wanted to do great things. I guess he just never believed he could—could make a difference; be special."

"Oh, John's one of a kind, he is," the Doctor says, believing it so with everything in her.

"Here," Wilf holds out his hand. In it sits a box with a six digit tumbler lock. "Something he bought from an antique shop; thought it was a neat little gadget. He never told me the combination, though, probably so Sylvia couldn't drag it out of me."

The Doctor takes the box from Wilf silently, pulling out her glasses. She vaguely recalls John's love of them and it brings a half-smile to her face. It's a funny little thing, entirely wooden, like a puzzle box. Of course it's wood; no Sonicking it. "Why is it wood?"

Wilf shrugs, not knowing why that's relevant. Nonetheless, the Doctor begins fiddling with it. "Can you figure it out?"

"It's too pretty for him to make the combination a superhero or something. It's probably a sentimental whatnot." The Doctor puts her glasses away and exchanges them for her stethoscope. Six digits of a wooden tumbler. She starts with the easy guesses, all birthdays and anniversaries and such. "So, how are things here, Wilf?"

"Oh, we're fine, really," Wilfred waves nonchalantly. "I'm fine, still got me ol' bum ticker. Sylvia is fine, though she wishes John were here, I think. We miss him."

The Doctor doesn't know what to say to that. She'd love for things to all work out, but life doesn't function in that way. John deserves a good, happy, healthy, _long_ life—a normal life. He promised her forever, though, and she has ever intention of making that promise come to fruition. Somehow, she'll find a way. "I'm getting nothing; do you have any ideas, Wilf?"

"None, I don't know any of John's passwords," the man shrugs. He pauses for a moment. "Well, actually, Sylvia got onto John's computer by guessing 'Doctor'."

"Oh," the woman's throat constricts for a moment. As the realization sets in she begins turning numbers with rushed, trembling fingers. A click sounds her success and she barks a victorious laugh. "Oh, that sneaky little Earthboy; gotta love 'im!"

"Certainly, yeah," Wilf chuckles to himself. He's at least glad the Doctor seems as smitten with John as he is with her. "Doctor, may I ask you a personal question?"

"Permission granted," the Doctor turns to Wilf tentatively.

"Are you and John…?" Wilfred lets the question speak for itself as he rolls his hands to gesture for an answer.

"Oh," the Doctor repeats herself; she did not expect this. "Um, well, I suppose…in a-a, well, um, i-in a way… "

"John told me that he wanted to travel with you forever." Wilfred faces the woman solidly, nearly standing at attention. "Would you?—would you travel with him forever?"

"I would," the Doctor answers in less than a heartbeat's time. "I want to, Wilfred. I want to be with John…forever."

In only a second Wilf's serious facade falls and he breaks into a wide smile. Without hesitation he takes the alien woman into a tight hug. "I knew it! I told him!—I told John you had to love him too! And you, young lady, you must call me Gramps from now on!"

"All right, then," the Doctor laughs as Wilf continues to capture her in his embrace. Her heats feel warm, and happy. "I'd be proud to call you my grandfather!"

"You will visit, though, right? I mean, will there be a wedding?—we'll be there, yeah? Oh, Sylvia would have a fit if we weren't. What about young ones? Have you discussed it at all? You'll have to bring them around too, you know. Oh, there's so much to talk about, love!"

"Oi, Gramps," the Doctor addresses Wilf amicably. "Listen, I'd love to stay and chat, about all of that, but I have to find John. Besides, _we_ haven't even talked of all that yet, it's too early for you to be thinking about it."

"Oh, that's what you think," Wilf laughs. There will be plenty of time for family bonding, though. He'll gossip with her to his heart's content later—preferably with John there, so he can be well embarrassed over everything. "So, you can use that to find John?"

"Oh, yes," the Doctor growls out with a toothy smile. She clasps the ring between her fingers tightly. "This is like a key, that will magnetize John's essence. If I can get a transdimensional spanner to transmit through it I can pull John back to me no matter where he is, in any reality, anywhere, anywhen."

"Well, go on, then!" Wilfred cheers. "And don't tell Sylvia what's—"

"Don't tell me what?"

The Doctor feels ice flood her veins at that voice. She turns, clasping the biodampener tightly in her fist. "Sylvia, you're looking well, this has been lovely, I really must—"

"Hold on, you're that Doctor!" Sylvia closes in, unbelievably frightening for a human woman of average height and build. "You were at the wedding, and then John went looking for you and disappeared! Then there was the Atmos thing and he disappeared again! Who the hell are you?!"

"I'm the Doctor," she answers cryptically.

"But who are you?!" Sylvia continues to roar and rage at the strange woman, ignoring her father. "Tell me! Give me one reason to trust you with my John!"

"I can't!" the Doctor shouts back, silencing both humans effectively. "I don't have a reason for you to trust me."

"Then why should I believe that John is safe with you?!"

"Because I love him!" The Doctor doesn't back down, or waver under Sylvia's hard glare. If anything she stands taller, staring the older woman down. "I love John, and that's all you'll ever have to know about me, is that I would do anything to keep your son safe."

"How can you love him?" Sylvia asks rhetorically. It's not that her son is unlovable, but rather she doesn't know how this nearly alien woman could love any human. "Don't you have anyone else to sink your claws into?"

"No," the Doctor says in a quiet contrast, now looking decisively down at Sylvia, but not angrily. "I don't have anyone, not anymore. I only have John. He's the only one for me; one of a kind."

"Of course he's one of a kind, he's my son."

"Then tell him that," the Doctor rebuts. She feels like a young wife on Gallifrey, quarreling with her mother in law again. "Tell him that instead of how normal he is, because he is anything but average. John Smith is brilliant, and one of a kind, one in a million. John is my most faithful companion. He promised me forever—he is my forever!"

Sylvia physically recoils from the Doctor's words. She knew nothing of their relationship. John was determined to find her but she didn't think they were ever actually tied like this. He gave little word of his "travelling and helping people with the Doctor". He said it kept him busy, like a job.

"And I plan to make the most of every moment of it." The Doctor holds the biodampener in front of Sylvia for just a second as she starts out of the house. She registers the shock on Sylvia's face and revels in it just a little bit. "Don't worry, we'll see each other again."

"You go, sweetheart!" Wilfred waves at the Doctor from the door.

The Doctor makes it to the console when she feels a rumbling outside the TARDIS doors. She looks up at the ceiling but her ship is scarily quiet. The lights have all gone a dampened red. The Doctor approaches the door and opens it slowly. "Gramps?"

There's nothing. It's just air, and space. The cosmos floats by, showing no sign of the Earth. There's no trace, no hint, not even a whisper. The Earth is gone. She really has lost everything now.

"Right…now we're in trouble."


	14. Journey's End (The Death of the Doctor)

"Come on!" The Doctor's fist hits the console with a metallic bang. When she only gets grinding gears and hissing sparks in reply she sinks down to the floor. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I am, but p-please… "

_You must calm yourself my Doct_

"Don't tell me to calm down!" the woman hollers. Her voice, like thunder, booms off the walls painfully. It only cuts through the silence and goes right back to her, hurting her ears. The skin around her eyes is burning raw from rubbing. The salt of her tears makes it feel tightly drawn.

Quiet falls, save the humming and grinding of the old girl's usual workings. She gives her Doctor some time. The minutes pass slowly, painfully. If the TARDIS silenced herself you could hear two sad heartbeats, crying with each beat.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor whispers to the ceiling. A slight vibration behind her back assures her that there is nothing to forgive. "I need him."

_I am searching for him, Doctor. He has been pulled through realities._

"Well," the Doctor stands. She swipes at her tears just once more before grabbing hold of her controls again. "I suppose we'll just have to pull harder."

_Doctor_

_Calling the Doctor _

The Doctor forms an odd expression at the telepathic tap on the shoulder. She pulls the psychic paper out with one smooth hand and flips it open. "John?"

_Turn Left_

_Shadow Proclamation_

_Calling the Doctor_

"Okay, you've found me, Earthboy, now tell me where you are…and how can you use the psychic paper?"

_Turn Left_

_Shadow Proclamation_

_Turn Left _

"You heard the man, love," the Doctor pushes a lever. Rumbling rises through the interior like smoke from a volcano.

_What did I tell you?_

"Yeah," the Doctor rolls her eyes and draws out the word at length. "Don't get cocky with me, Veera Duckworth."

_Turn Left_

_Shadow Proclamation_

_ShadowProclamationShadowProclamationShadowProclama tionShadowProclamationShadowProclamationShadowProc lamationShadow _

"What's wrong with you?" The Doctor smacks the leather against her arm a couple times.

_ ShadowProclamationShadowProclamationShadowProclama tionShadowProclamationShadowProclamation _

"All right, calm down." The Doctor sets the technology open on the console beside her working hands. She spares the surface, now blank again, a grateful little smile. "Can you get a read on him?"

_His signature is headed for the Shadow Proclamation._

"In our reality?" asks the Doctor. When she receives the telepathic translation of an eyebrow raise she huffs. "All right, I just asked."

The grinding sound of TARDIS and her Doctor's arrival sounds through the Shadow Proclamation hangar. The doors are all but thrown open, allowing a dramatic entry for the red haired woman. Security swarms to her like bees around fresh pollen but she brushes past them. She walks with such a stride that her coat flies out behind her, and the wind seems too voluminous for her average sized steps. It were as if reality were whisking past her, rushing like a river around a rock by her presence.

"Shadow Architect!" the Doctor calls upon/announced her arrival. The woman in question is a frightening humanoid. Her appearance is wholly white, with a light greenish tint. Her eyes and fingernails are the color of fresh blood. Her hands are held with unsettling stillness.

"The rogue Time Lord, come at last," the creepy woman greets. "You belong in the myths and whispers of the higher species."

"Yeah, more importantly, I've got transdimensional retroclosure overlapping with a reality metacrisis." The ginger woman breezes past the much more alien looking one with the psychic paper. "Got a message from another dimension of reality."

"Parallel worlds are sealed off;" despite her skepticism the Shadow Architect does look at the gadget. She sees some words pixelate into view. "I'll be back soon…with a…with an 'x'?"

"It's a kiss, actually - we've all done that before - and it's from a human who has been pulled through the realities as a biological temporal anomaly. He sent me the message on the psychic paper because we're linked." The Doctor works in a flurry, deliberately turning her back on the Shadow Architect as she speaks.

"A human cannot over reach timeline dimensional blocks."

"This one can!" The Doctor snaps at the alien. She has had just about enough of her. "He can interweave realities around himself like a universal dimension warpfold manipulator."

"No mortal is capable-"

"I told you, this one is different!" The Doctor snarls at the Shadow Architect, sparing only a whip of her hair over her shoulder in disgust as she throws a lever dramatically. "I went to The Library-"

"So, you continue to endanger worlds through time as well as space," the Shadow Architect doesn't back down from the Time Lady. "I suppose you didn't learn your lesson when you lost your 51st century human companion."

"Stop it," the Gallifreyan snaps with a controlled fire.

"The second one now consults with UNIT, knowing of the technologies of your kind, does he not? You used a chameleon arc to conceal your genetic code and used a human as a shield. You hid like a coward, using the human to concealed your one of a kind," the Shadow Architect lets a hint of acid leak from her tongue as she says "scent."

"I offer them a choice to come," the Doctor offers weakly.

"Then you abandon them and dare not look back to face the truth. The truth is that you destroy their lives, leave them in ruin, as you continue travelling through the universe." The red eyed one begins circling the one from Gallifrey. Her gaze measures the synapses of the Time Lady's thoughts. Every biomedical element that feeds into her signature in the universe is at the mercy of the Proclamation head. As long as her unblinking eyes stay analyzing the Time Lady is helpless to move. "Your mind holds the convergence of time and resulting astromolecular flux. Your mind is a matrix of the universe and its fate, and you enjoy that, don't you? You enjoy playing God with your little humans, and their timelines, but when it is over you nothing but a thief. You stole the TARDIS, left your planet to burn through the loops of time and abandoned your name for your title. You, the Doctor, the healer and knower of fates. I name you, Doctor; I name you the destroyer of worlds."

"This one is different," the Doctor chokes out through her paralysis. She came knowing the power of the Shadow Architect and her all knowing gaze. Same as a Time Lord can see the matrix of timelines the Shadow Species sees an organism's life makeup—every bit of physical compound and amygdalous pattern that makes up a being's existence. "He knows the risks, he made his choice."

"You chose him." The Shadow one finally releases the Doctor from her analysis.

"I do choose him," the Doctor says firmly and captures the Architect's intrigue. "Every time, through all time, I choose him."

"That is why you have a link," the pale woman approaches again but doesn't lock the Doctor in place. "You have chosen this human as your mate."

"Don't make it sound so romantic." The Doctor rolls her eyes and goes back to working, deliberately avoiding interaction again. "I have found a more lasting companion, yes."

"You plan on telling him your name," the Shadow Architect scoffs at the notion.

"He knows it already," the Doctor murmurs, not entirely enthused. "He doesn't know he knows it yet, but he does."

A convergence of energy is projected and a dimensional backfed insertion portal is activated, interrupting the flow of physical chronological energy. In equation, it could be simplified as dimension versus time denominated by (quantum looped) reality signature equals stabilized dimension matrix fed through quasar theory chronology within isolated transdimensonal energy walls.

Physicsphysicsphysicsphysicsphysics: the Abridged Version, written by the Doctor, edited by wibbly-wobbly and illustrated by timey-wimey.

"John!"

The man named jumps up off the floor like a spring in a gun barrel. He looks exhausted, and harried, and unbelievable happy to be here. "Doctor!"

The Shadow Architect watches disapprovingly as the Time Lady leaps into the arms of the human. His arms wrap around her waist and he lifts her, spinning her around luxuriously. The female laughs with delight and wraps her arms around his neck. It is a sickening display of humanoid, singular brained affection. "This is impossible!"

"Not impossible," the Doctor says just above whispering, still staring rapturously at John's happy face.

"Just a bit unlikely," John beams back at her, still holding her above him, securely in his arms.

"Doctor, you will remove yourself from the male!"

John sets the Doctor on her feet more gently than necessary and glances at the frightening woman in dark green robes. She certainly looks like a woman but is also certainly not a human one. She doesn't look too pleased with him, that's for certain. "John Smith; I'm a human."

"Maybe not an endangered species but every bit as important as a Time Lord," the Doctor glares at the other female in the room.

"Who is he, then?" The Shadow Architect tries to get a proper read on the human but finds nothing. His genetic signature is blocked from her; she can't even render him still.

"Oh, I'm just an Earthboy," John smiles, unable to be brought down even by this creepy bag of skin and bones. "Travelling the stars with my Spacegirl."

"So, you really have chosen him as your mate," the pale one says, once again with a distinct tone of disgust.

"Mate in which sense of the word?" John raises an eyebrow but doesn't see anyone appreciating the attempt at humor. "Either way, yes, that's me."

"John, this is the Shadow Architect, of the Shadow Species, also gone, like mine. She runs the Shadow Proclamation." The Doctor runs a hand over John's arm as she speaks.

"Oh, good, so you did get my message," John nods.

"Cry for help," the Doctor smirks, "with a kiss?"

"We've all done that," John shrugs un-apologetically.

"How did you know how to send me a message through the psychic paper?" The Doctor lets John take it from her and watches as he tilts it towards her. In his hands, it goes blank and rewrites itself.

_Doctor_

_I helped John get from his parallel hybrid universe back to yours_

_The reality of The Library broke down_

_Every reality is breaking down_

_You know what that means_

_I'm sorry_

_I want you to know I was happy in the life you programmed for me_

_I want you to know I was happy_

_That you made the right decision_

_I'm sorry_

_Goodbye _

_Love__ Lee_

The Doctor sucks in a slow breath. She does know what this means. She and Lee found the prophecy of the reality bomb. They knew about the danger of z-neutrino energy. They knew it meant the end of reality. She had thought they had stopped it by tearing from The Library's virtual reality and defeating the last of the Cult of Skaro would prevent this.

"He helped me get back to you when I was folded into a mix of different realities. He said I had pulled different unstable realities around me to stabilize the universe I was in." John strokes the Doctor's hand with his thumb as she stares down at the psychic paper. "He wanted you to know that you made the right decision. He said that he had a really good life in The Library, and that he never regretted travelling with you. He…he still loved you, when we met."

"Doctor, what is this regarding?" The Shadow Architect interrupts.

"It's nothing, its just a-a blip, just a blip, but I've got to go." The Doctor keeps her head down, taking John by the hand back to the TARDIS.

"Doctor, I cannot allow you to leave!" the Shadow Architect shouts. "You are the last of a species, and your control of the time matrix means that you must be pursuing the temporal rifts originating in the Medusa Cascade! By the writ of the Shadow Proclamation you cannot interfere in the interweaving of realities strung around your own timeline! You will cause the collapse of reality!"

"I am trying to save this reality's future!" she shouts as she shoves John inside. "I am this world's only hope because this world is wrong."

"You know what the only way to rewrite an interwoven matrix is."

The Doctor lowers her voice dangerously: "the death of a multi-dimensional timeline."

"The Shadow Proclamation cannot permit the acknowledged extinction of a species, especially not the species of Gallifreyan/Time Lord." The Shadow Architect makes no move to approach the newly materialized TARDIS, honed in on the human's signature. "This is suicide."

"Don't worry, you'll still have a Time Lord, in this reality or the next. Just stay in here, within the time lock, you should be safe." The Doctor spares the other endangered species a nod of solidarity. "I have to."

"By the holy writ of the Shadow Proclamation," the Architect watches the Time Lady turn her back and enter her ship. "I order you to halt."

The TARDIS fades from sight, on its way to the Medusa Cascade.

"The death of the Doctor has come."


	15. Journey's End (Allons-y)

"The Medusa Cascade."

The TARDIS spins to a halt, swimming in the glitter galacticum that is the rift of time and space, where there is nothing and everything. She floats among the stardust, catching in the winds unbound by gravity.

"A rift," the Doctor begins with heavy hearts, "in time and space. I came here when I was young, actually, only 90 years old."

"This is amazing," John gasps at the view he can only see through the monitor. It's a sea of colors to his human eyes. "Doctor, what's here?"

"A metacrisis," she sighs. Her hands are in her pockets. Her eyes look dull, tired with ashen complexion. "The Medusa Cascade is a rift, a pivotal point in time and space, across dimensions and realities. This is from where the time ripples originate. Somewhere, in another reality, the Medusa Cascade is hosting a horrible degradation of the laws of reality. Holes are being ripped through universes, including ours, probably the result of a dimension canon, literally destabilizing every universe it passes through."

"But how can something do that much damage?" John asks as he drags his tired body to where the Doctor stands. "And how can it rip through our reality?"

"John, when you met Lee, he told you realities were bending around you, and that the Doctor had died. Reality is fixing around a point, and that point is you." The Doctor pulls out two gold rings from her coat pocket. Along with them, she pulls out the Sonic, with major modifications.

"What have you done to the Sonic?" John demands at the sight of it.

"Screwdriver: it'll be much more useful," she tosses it to him. "You keep that safe, with you, at all times form now on."

"Doctor, tell me what's going on," John clenches the Sonic (Screwdriver?) tightly in his fist. He sees the gold rings in her hand. "Why do you need with the biodampener?"

"This one is for you." The Doctor holds the ring up to their eyes for just a moment before slipping it on his finger. She keeps a hold of the hand, for all that she's worth, with tears in her eyes. "Keep it with you, John, it's very important that you never let this leave your hand again."

"Why do you have two of them?"

"This one is from another dimension," the Doctor rushes with hardly an explanation. "It stays with me and the one I gave you stays on your hand."

"Doctor, please," John begs of her with a whispered tone, "just tell me what's going on. Tell me what's happening."

The Doctor bites her lip. She told herself she wouldn't cry, mostly because every time she cries John tries to comfort her, and it melts her hearts. She can't let that happen this time, because this is the end. The day of the Doctor has arrived. "This is goodbye, Earthboy."

John's heart stutters over the words. His eyes turn cold and beads of cold sweat collect around his brow. His throat feels like he's being suffocated. "Doctor, I don't understand."

"John, our reality is breaking down. The world is wrong, but I am going to fix it." The Time Lady has fire in her hearts, spitting sparks onto her tongue. "I am going to restabilize the reality nexus by going into the void to cross the transdimensional timelines of the bifixed metacrises."

"You're…you'll kill yourself," John whispers just to make himself understand what's really happening. "You can't—you're talking about erasing your existence for this world!"

"I am the Doctor!" she snaps in his face. Her voice booms and echoes in absolute surety. "I am the Doctor, the protector of this Earth—any Earth, and right now, the depths of the Medusa Cascade is where the Earth happens to be!"

"What?"

"Nothing!—now, remember that reality is going to bend around you. Stay in the TARDIS, she has shields that should protect you as you're being pulled through universes. Stay here, keep the biodampener on, keep safe." The Doctor heads for the door but John grasps the handle tight. He keeps the door shut with a grave look on his face. "John, you need to let me do this."

"You promised me forever," he says shortly.

"I know, and I am sorry, but you have to let me do this," the Doctor looks from the door to John's darkened eyes, "you have to let me save you!"

"Not this time I don't!" John shouts and bangs his fist on the door. The sound, the ruckus, doesn't bother her in the slightest. "You can't save everyone, not this time!—not today!"

"But today is it! This is my only chance, John, and if I don't do this then this whole universe and God knows how many others are destroyed! This is our only chance, and I am it! I am the only hope this world has for even a _chance_ of surviving!"

The air settles in the doorway of the TARDIS, weighing on them. Their eyes are fighting a violent battle of wills. John's hand remains flat on the wood of the door while the Doctor's hand grasps his fingers, willing his to respond like they normally do. Her fingers continue to tighten around his until finally his curl around hers as well.

"Why is it always you?" John asks rhetorically.

"I don't know if it is, actually," she chokes on a poor example of a laugh.

"Please don't do this," John whispers, but knows it's selfish. This is the life of the Doctor: saving worlds, rescuing civilizations, not being able to save everyone but still trying to save someone. This is what it means to let people live without you, move on, forget you, so that they can be happy. "Please don't leave me."

The Doctor leans up and kisses John's lips with a loving delicacy. It at least forces some silence upon them both. When she pulls away he has tears running down his cheeks, onto his lips. She can lick hers and taste the saltiness. Her thumbs wipe the tears away, leaving only a slight glistening against his freckled skin. "You're one of a kind, John Smith."

"And I love you for it."

John feels the Doctor's lips fade from his as the doors open and she drifts out. He catches just a glimpse of her red hair, flying out behind her as she delves into the Medusa Cascade, all swirling color and sparkling light. The doors close on him and he feels like he's having a heart attack.

_Hold on, Earthboy._

"What's happening?!" John's shouts bounce off the ceiling. Spit bubbles at the corners of his mouth where he clenches his teeth. "Tell me what's happening!"

_It's the metacrisis. You're going to feel the effects of it because you're a pivotal point in time just as much as our Doctor is. You are one of the children of time. _

"What's happening to my heart?!" John spits as his entire chest burns up.

_I can't tell you that yet, John, but if you want to save the Doctor you must do as I say._

"Okay!—okay, I'm listening! Just tell me what to do! Tell me how to save her!" John clutches at his chest but forces himself upright and to the TARDIS console.

_The Doctor is tying different realities together to create one big paradoxal alternate universe around which reality can bend, with you safe in it. Your only chance is to follow her into the void, with the biodampener, and the Sonic Screwdriver to hone in on her signal. You are half a metacrisis, John Smith, and the Doctor is the other half. You are one of a kind, because you're a human-Time Lord tri-dimensional metacrisis._

"What does that mean?!" John grips the edge of the console as another wave of white hot pain bursts inside his chest. "What's happening to me?!"

_A ripple across different realities, bouncing back and converging on you. You're growing a second heart._

"Like the Doctor?" John gets a moment of relief to look up.

_Yes, now listen to me, Earthboy. Take the Psychic Paper._

"All right," he grabs at it and stuffs it in his pinstripe jacket. When did he put this bloody thing on again?

_I am going to launch you straight to the point where the realities converge within the Medusa Cascade, in the same way a vortex manipulator would._

"Okay, so I can get to the Doctor," John grabs the trench the old girl popped up for him on the railing. He slides it on in jerky motions.

_Once you find her, you have to be willing to make a great sacrifice, John Smith. _

"Whatever it is, I can do it!" he shouts through his teeth, clenched tighter and tighter.

_You must be willing to kill the Doctor as we know her._

This stops John entirely, from all motion and thought. "Tell me you didn't just suggest that."

_This Doctor's time has come to an end, John, and the only hope of saving any part of her is for you to take her place in the reality nexus and rewrite her into the new dimensional matrix in your place. _

"As…a human?"

_As a human, John; our Doctor has to surrender her timeline to one who can stabilize the reality that could destroy her._

"It's me, isn't it? It's me; reality bends around me." John's face has turned dark, murderous, as he looks up to the disembodied voice that circles around his head. "You're asking me to take the Doctor's unraveling timeline and take her place so she can replace me in mine. Then, what?—we bind together realities from there?"

_Yes, essentially, if you take the correct timeline and bind it to our reality while in the Medusa Cascade, reality can rewrite itself around you. It is the only chance this world has. _

"Why wouldn't the Doctor tell me this?"

…_There is a chance you could be unwritten when you try to cross the misaligned timelines within an unstable dimensional nexus. _

"I could disappear, then the Doctor is doomed either way," John clenches his fist. He both loves and loathes the feeling of cold, solid metal on his ring finger. "But you're letting me try."

_Time Lords can see all of time and space, until it is set off balance. The Doctor has lost sight of her future, and that's why she has gone to correct the imbalance herself. She thinks the choice is hers to make. _

"She's trying to protect me," John grumbles, reluctant to admit her reasoning. "It's still not right!"

_Then go after her._

"What about you?" John deposits the Sonic Screwdriver into the trench's inside pocket.

_Keep the Sonic Screwdriver with you. It is of my make, and connected to my technology, whether in this reality or the next. So long as you have that, you can find me._

"Is that why the Doctor gave me the biodampener?" John approaches the door slowly.

_It is._

"She said the Earth was in the Medusa Cascade. She could have only gotten this from Gramps."

_Your Earth has already been torn through realities. She has gone to in search of it, and your family. _

"She'll take care of them," John states less than asks. He is still headed for the doors, slowly enough.

_I know this is not the eternity you had in mind, John Smith, but this is the only hope for any lasting reality to exist. Are you willing? Are you capable of shouldering the burden of a Time Lord? Can you take a thousand years of knowledge and harness it on as your own? Do you want to find Donna?_

"I am, I will," John takes hold of the door handles and takes in another breath, "I do."

John Smith, human of London, hurtles from the safety of the TARDIS. He flies through space and into the light that is the rift. It's white, blinding, swallowing his insignificant little existence and enveloping it with time and space.

_John?_

_Doctor, I'm here to help!_ John squints against the light. He can't see anything.

_You can't!—I told you to stay in the TARDIS! It's not safe here!_

John opens his eyes a little more and manages to see a silhouette. _You're not the only one allowed to risk their lives, you know!_

_You're not a superhero, Earthboy, you don't know what could happen!_

_Every superhero has a reason for fighting, Doctor!_ John opens his eyes and braces himself against the rush of reality, rushing against his physical form. He reaches out a hand and finds the silhouette. He knows the fingers that curl around his, and he feels the clash of metal against his biodampener. _And you're mine! You're my reason!_

Existence rushes around them, time flowing like a river. It is all white, and blank, everything and nothing. Worlds are shifting and forming around them.

_I'll take care of them! _The Doctor's voice call to John as he feels her being ripped from him in the wind and the stardust around them.

"I'll find you!" John shouts to her as she fades once again. He refuses to lose her again. He waits, through the falsified passage of time. A thousand years of life pass by his eyes as a life now unlived but remembered. "I promise you I'll find you!"

_I understand, now. My name is John Smith, I am a human, born on Earth. I traveled with the Doctor, an alien from the planet Gallifrey and a Time Lady. She can see time and space, and now, so can I. I have manipulated time and existence around me to save realities. I am a human Time Lord—a metacrisis. I am the Time Lord victorious, and I will save the Doctor, turned human. I am a Time Lord; I am the Doctor, now. I am the Doctor, and I have waited a thousand years to find the love of my life: Donna Noble._

—

"Donna, what are you waiting for?!"

Donna rolls her eyes as her mother's voice pierces her ears, even from the other room. Sometimes Donna really doesn't know why she puts up with her blasted mother, but something keeps her there. She never moved out, never went off on her own. Part of her told her it was just to make sure Gramps was all right, but she still loves her mother, in some weird way.

The ring on Donna's finger fits like it's made for her. It's a simple band of gold, obviously a wedding ring, but there's something special about this. It doesn't register as metal, doesn't set off metal detectors, doesn't heat up on contact, and doesn't fit anyone but Donna. The one time she let her friend Alice so much as hold it, the ring's surface burned her. The mark didn't last, and the pain faded quickly, but only Donna can wear it. She has had it for as long as she can remember, and now, she finally gets to wear it.

"Donna, you don't want to be late for your own wedding!" Sylvia pounds on the door.

Donna rolls her eyes. Sometimes she can't even remember why she agreed to marry Lance in the first place. She finds she often can't remember why things in her life are the way they are. The questions are plentiful, the gaps are huge, but she never bothered to protest to any of it. Some part of her, in instinct, just trusts that things are the way they are for a reason.

"Oh, you do look lovely."

Donna turns, startled by the sudden appearance of the new voice. By the door there leans a man in a pinstripe suit. He's skinny, with a long trench coat back dropping him. His hair is wild, like he's been sucked through a vacuum. His eyes are brown, darkened by time and life. He looks at her like he's expecting something. "Who the hell are you?"

"Hello," he smiles at her (rather dashingly) "I'm the Doctor."

"The Doctor?" Donna looks dubious, "that's your name?"

"In a way, yes," the man nods back and forth. "I have been looking for you for a long time, Donna Noble."

"Me?" she frowns at the stranger. "Why would you be looking for me?"

"That's kind of a long story. If you have something else to be doing," the man eyes her up and down. "I could always come back later."

"No, don't leave," Donna rushes out with a kind of urgency in her. The Doctor's eyes rake up her form appreciatively and she blushes at herself.

"I won't leave, Donna," he assures her serious as anything, "I promise you, I won't leave."

"Just," Donna contemplates, "tell me why you've been looking for me."

"I could show you," the Doctor tips up his chin and extends his hand, wiggling his fingers enticingly. "What do you say?—come with me?"

Donna stares at the man in awe. He can't be serious; just go with him, just like that? How the hell does he live his life?

"Donna, get down here!"

The Doctor's face becomes soft, almost reminiscent. "That your mum?"

"Yeah, she can be a real nightmare sometimes," Donna rolls her eyes nervously. Her heart is pounding wildly and she can't fathom why.

"Yeah, but it takes devotion to put up with family like that," the Doctor comes a little closer, with his hands in his pockets, "you must be a dedicated soul."

"What are you on about, Spacecase?" Donna raises a brow at him.

"I'm not a space case!" he pouts at her (rather cutely). "I think I'm more of a-a…a Space_man_!"

"Whatever you want to be, be it without me, I'm getting married!" Donna waves her hand irritably at him.

"Yeah, caught on to that bit," the Doctor murmurs unhappily. He sighs and bores his eyes into Donna blue ones. "Tell me you'd rather get married than find out why I've been looking for you and I'll leave, right now. I'll return the second you call me, but only if you can look me in the eyes and tell me you'd rather get married than come with me."

Donna stares at the stranger with mixed feelings. Her lips are slightly parted. She tries to keep her eyes on the Doctor's anticipatory face but they keep drifting down to his extended hand. On his finger sits a ring that looks identical to hers. It's gold looking, but she can just…tell…it's not a wedding ring, no more than hers is. For a reason completely beyond her her hand drifts towards his. Her fingers touch his and she finds his skin just slightly cool. Her eyes go back to his and he looks so elated by the feeling of her hand in his she turns pink in the cheeks. His fingers clasp around hers and she tries not to feel the implications of that. "Okay, fine, you get once chance…Spaceman."

The Doctor smiles at Donna: "allons-y."


End file.
